Diving Into It Together
by bingblot
Summary: A sequel to my fic "Feels Like Home". An AU version of Season 3, following Castle and Beckett's relationship.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: All things "Castle" belong to Andrew Marlowe and the powers that be at ABC.

Author's Note: A sequel to "Feels Like Home," so you should read that first, following Castle and Beckett through Season 3, although I don't plan to deal with every episode in the season. It turned out I couldn't resist the chance to play with Season 3 since it's my favorite season.

Starting with a prologue, set in the summer before Season 3.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Prologue_

Kate Beckett was not in a good mood.

Kate couldn't quite help but scowl as she entered her apartment and stepped out of her heels, leaving them carelessly by the side of the door.

It had not been a good day.

They had closed their latest case today but in the final takedown, the killer, a thug affiliated with one of the gangs, had shoved her into a brick wall before Espo had tackled him so she was a little bruised. More than that, she was annoyed at herself for letting the perp push her aside like that. She hated the times when the sheer fact of her being female and therefore lighter than most men got in the way of her doing her job.

Then, in being shoved like that, one of her favorite leather jackets had gotten torn by the bricks so she thought the jacket would end up being a loss.

She'd tried to make coffee for herself using Castle's espresso machine in the precinct and gotten a minor steam burn on her fingers when the machine, as per usual, expressed its displeasure at her being the one to use it. (Stupid biased machine. And it was annoyingly impervious to any of her glares and annoyed mutterings. If she didn't know better, she would wonder if Castle had done something to rig the machine so it wouldn't work properly for her, ensuring that she needed to keep him around if she wanted a proper supply of coffee throughout her day. Maybe he'd bewitched the damn machine. Bewitched! She let out another annoyed huff. She had clearly spent way too much time with Castle if that was the sort of thing she was thinking.)

And then to top off her bad day, someone had already taken the spot she usually parked in by the time she arrived back at her apartment so she'd needed to park an extra five blocks away from her place, which, while not that big a deal in the greater scheme of things, was just one more minor annoyance in a day filled with annoyances.

So no, Beckett was not in a good mood.

She was also tired, which didn't help anything. She hadn't slept well the night before. Or the night before that. Or—oh, who was she kidding, she hadn't really slept well for the last two weeks. Or the last 16 days, 11 hours and 39 minutes, give or take.

Not that she was counting.

Fine, yes, she was counting. She couldn't seem to help counting, her mind automatically keeping track of the days, the hours.

Bother.

She huffed as she went into her bedroom and changed into sweats and the over-large t-shirt she'd appropriated from Castle during her stay at the loft. Yes, she'd been deliberately choosing to sleep in his shirt. It was comfortable and soft from repeated washings, that was all. No deeper meaning to it than that.

 _Liar_ , a little voice in her mind spoke up.

Kate directed a glare at the voice in her head (that, predictably, had no effect whatsoever.)

She was fine. She was just fine. Really, she was. She had managed on her own quite successfully before Castle had come along and she could certainly get by just fine without Castle for a couple weeks. She was strong, independent Detective Beckett; she didn't need a man in her life to take care of her.

She didn't.

Of course, she had to admit albeit rather grudgingly, it wasn't about needing a man—needing Castle—to take care of her. Not even Castle would have dared tell her that she needed him around to take care of her.

But she did need him. She needed Castle to… make her happy. It was as simple and as complicated as that.

She _missed_ him, damn it. Dratted man for wriggling his way into her life and then somehow infiltrating every corner of it with his smiles and his eyes and his humor and his loyalty. And if ever she'd needed proof of just how true it was that having Castle around made her work—her life—more fun, the last two weeks—16 days—since he'd left on his book tour had proven it.

Since he'd been gone, her life had mostly returned to the usual routine it had followed for years before she'd really met Castle, revolving entirely around work. Her evenings were once again quiet and predictable, consisting of her eating takeout in solitary splendor in her apartment, usually with a book. It was all almost exactly as her life had been before Castle had shown up. Organized, quiet, peaceful.

And she hated it.

For someone who had spent her entire adult life living alone and had always believed she liked it that way, it was a little stunning to realize that she'd been wrong all this time. Or more accurately, to realize just how much she'd changed over the course of the couple months she'd stayed at the loft, how much she'd changed since meeting Castle and, yes, falling in love with him.

Oh, she'd liked having her own space again when she'd moved into her own apartment but she was finding that having her own space, time to herself, was only pleasant when she knew her time alone would be limited. Space and time to herself for an indefinite amount of time with no possibility of interruption was dreary. And lonely.

She wanted to eat her dinner while listening to Alexis's blithe chatter about her classes and her friends and Martha's dramatic, exaggerated stories about theatrical life and Castle's funny stories and teasing rejoinders. She wanted the conversations and the laughter and the affection that flowed so freely between them. She wanted her family, the family life she'd somehow become a part of, back. She wanted _Castle_ back.

He was the center of it all, the beating heart of his family, even if during dinners at the loft, he was often (amazingly enough) rather drowned out when compared to Martha and even Alexis, at times, outnumbered by the women in his life as he liked to complain.

More than that, he was… what? He was her lodestone. When he was around, she felt as if she were a compass that had been somehow reconfigured to make him true north, her awareness and her senses focused on him even if she wasn't looking in his direction or ostensibly paying any attention to him at all.

She missed him. She was a little dismayed and annoyed at herself for missing him so much because it wasn't as if he'd entirely dropped off the face of the planet. She could still contact him. They still talked every day. Throughout the day, even.

They'd been texting back and forth with so much frequency to the point that she was beginning to wonder if she might develop repetitive strain injury from texting him so much with her sending him brief summaries of the cases they'd had while he'd been gone and him responding with the occasional crazy theory—and his theory-texting had given her the only reasons to laugh while at work in the last two weeks. Espo and Ryan had made more than a few teasing comments about how her phone was practically glued to her hand these days and she had glared at them with as much heat as she could muster but had been aware that she was blushing a little—and it wasn't like they were wrong.

And then almost every evening, as long as Castle didn't have some publicity event to go to in whichever city he was in, once she got home from work, one or the other would call and they would talk over Skype. And though Kate didn't particularly want to admit it—probably wouldn't admit it out loud—those calls with Castle were the times she'd been happiest in the past two weeks. She spent most of her days looking forward to her calls with Castle because texting him, as amusing as his texts could be, was simply not the same as being able to see him and hear his voice and his laugh.

But really nothing made up for his physical absence. It was ridiculous since Kate had never been a clingy girlfriend, had been more likely to want space than to want more closeness. She wasn't even sure she liked missing Castle as much as she did but whether she liked it or not, she had to admit that the knowledge that Castle was away, that she couldn't simply go over to the loft and see him, was wearing on her.

It had been more than two weeks since she'd been able to kiss him or touch him in any way.

16 days, 11 hours, and 42 minutes, give or take, since Castle had wrapped his arms around her and kissed her long and thoroughly, kissed her deeply enough that by the time he drew back, she had to blink a few times before the haze in her brain had dissipated, and he'd given her one of his usual smug smiles, kissed her nose teasingly, and then they'd left her apartment together, she to go into the precinct and he to return to the loft to finish packing before heading to the airport.

16 days, 11 hours, and 42 minutes—which was approximately 15 days longer than the amount of time she was discovering she ever wanted to go without being able to kiss Castle.

And if the extent to which she missed him during the day wasn't irritating enough, she hadn't been able to sleep well since he'd been gone. It was stupid, ridiculous really, since it wasn't as if she and Castle had spent every night together in the past couple months. She had spent nights without him after she'd moved into her apartment since as long as Alexis was around, Castle couldn't spend every night out and she'd been fine during those nights.

Of course, it had helped knowing that it was only a matter of hours before she'd see him again—and helped, too, that on a couple of those nights, he had let himself into her apartment late at night long after Alexis would have fallen asleep, using the key she'd given him and she'd been awoken by his sliding into bed beside her. (The first time he had done that, she had startled awake and landed a rather solid punch to his ribs before she'd realized it was him. She winced a little and smiled at the same time as she remembered the way she'd proceeded to make it up to him afterwards so that by the time he had left her bed in the early morning hours, she'd been able to be quite sure that his memories of that night would not involve physical pain—or at least, not physical pain in the area of his ribs since he had choked out that she was killing him at one point during the night.)

But she'd found that sleeping alone while knowing that Castle was hundreds of miles away and there was absolutely no possibility of his either sneaking into her bed (or her sneaking into his, for that matter) or of seeing him first thing in the morning was a very different thing. Her bed had suddenly seemed enormous, a vast, desolate space without him in it. And damn it, when had she gotten to be so dependent on him for something like sleeping? She was used to sleeping alone, had always preferred to sleep alone, even when she'd been in relationships. She refused to believe that less than three months of sharing a bed with Castle most nights could have changed her so much and made it impossible for her to sleep soundly without him. She flatly refused to believe it.

(But she was beginning to think that, whether she believed it or not, it was true.)

It didn't help her denial that the only night she'd managed to sleep really well had been the evening she had stopped off at the loft to water the couple house plants that were usually Alexis's responsibility. She had used that excuse to spend the night in the loft, even if it had been odd being there entirely alone, but she had managed to sleep, soundly at that, on Castle's side of the bed with the scent of him filling her senses.

Castle had not been pleased with Black Pawn for arranging for him to go on a book tour for more than two weeks to help promote _Naked Heat_ , which was getting released in a month, but he'd relented after both Gina and Paula had pointed out to him that a certain number of book signings around the country were a standard part of publicity and they had, at least, scheduled the book tour for while Alexis was still away at camp. He still hadn't been thrilled with the idea and had asked her rather pleadingly (and only half-jokingly) if she couldn't insist that he was far too vital to the work of the NYPD to be spared for more than two weeks. She had laughed and assured him that the homicide division of the 12th Precinct had been around and solved a lot of murders before he'd arrived and she was sure they could manage without him.

He'd pouted and fixed her with one of his puppy-dog looks. "But you'll miss me, Beckett."

She'd smirked at him as she pretended to think about it. "Mm, maybe," she'd teased him. "I think I might enjoy the peace and quiet."

He'd made a face at her. "Don't be mean, Beckett."

She'd laughed again and kissed him lightly. "It's only two weeks, Castle. You'll be back before you know it."

"And who's going to keep you supplied with coffee while I'm away? You without caffeine is a menace to society," he'd quipped.

She had narrowed her eyes at him mock-threateningly. "I'm perfectly capable of getting coffee for myself, Castle. I managed just fine before you came along, you know."

He'd huffed an exaggerated sigh. "I know but would it kill you to let me feel a little bit helpful?"

She'd hid her smile as she told him with a straight face, "You're very helpful, Castle," and then when his face had lit up, she'd added, "You're the class clown who keeps everyone amused."

She'd laughed at his indignant "Hey!" before she'd smoothed away his mock frown by kissing him.

And now, for all her teasing and her vaunted confidence that she would be able to manage just fine without Castle for two weeks, even if she'd expected to miss him a little, she'd rather been hoist by her own petard, unable to so much as sleep comfortably without him, gravitating towards his warmth only to find it wasn't there, as if even in her sleep, her body sought his and woke when it found he wasn't there.

The precinct wasn't the same without him and she knew Espo and Ryan felt Castle's absence too. Whenever she left the precinct to chase down a lead, she found herself expecting Castle to fall into step beside her only to have to mentally shake herself and hope no one else noticed her infinitesimal pause or she'd open her lips to say something like, "You coming, Castle?" and would have to swallow the words back. She didn't know how many times she'd turned to the space beside her to address him with an observation or a quip or theory building or anything only to be reminded that he wasn't there.

Really, the man was everywhere! She couldn't seem to avoid the thought of him, was constantly finding herself orienting towards the space beside her where he always was, only to find herself feeling like a flower without the sun. She hadn't realized just how thoroughly he had woven himself into every corner of the fabric of her life until he'd left and even his frequent text messages were no substitute for him.

It was ridiculous!

Kate huffed in annoyance at herself and almost stalked back out to her kitchen where she dished up the takeout she'd bought on the way home and then settled on the couch to eat. She ate quickly as she usually did when she was eating alone and found her eyes wandering to the full-length bookshelf just visible through the door into the small room she was using as a study/library.

The bookshelf had been a gift from Castle and had accompanied his exaggeratedly ceremonial presentation of the full set of all his books, along with a smattering of Patterson's and Cannell's books and a number of Agatha Christies. She had made a token protest at his buying her the bookshelf; she felt bad enough that she had, in the end, taken him up on his offer of Martha's old furniture and had taken Martha's couch, her dining room set, a nightstand, and a coffee table from among the things in storage. She had been a little reluctant but on asking Martha, Martha had assured her volubly and flamboyantly that she was more than welcome to take anything and everything she wanted to from storage. Thus reassured, Kate had given in, much to Castle's poorly concealed delight. And on giving her the bookshelf, Castle had assumed an exaggeratedly pompous air and pontificated that, as an author, he had a personal and vested interest in ensuring that his books, the fruits of the labor of years, were not stored in boxes or—the horror—stacked on the floor. She had laughed at him but found herself giving in.

The sight of the bookshelf reminded her of the advance author copy of _Naked Heat_ , which Castle had given her just before he'd left. She had already read it, enjoyed it thoroughly (and thanked him for it just as thoroughly), and she felt a small smile hovering over her lips as she thought of the printed dedication: _To my best friend and partner, for all the ways you make me smile and amaze me every day._

And on the same page, he had handwritten his own personal message. _Kate, all my love, always. Rick._

And Castle would be back tomorrow. She smiled briefly to herself at the thought, one that had been echoing in her mind at various times throughout the day. Tomorrow.

Tonight, Castle had mentioned that Black Pawn had arranged for him to have dinner with some big muckedy-mucks up in Boston, or so Castle had termed them. So he wouldn't be free to call her.

But he would be home tomorrow. Alexis's summer program was ending at the end of the week and a few days after that, Alexis would be flying out to California to spend a week with Meredith. Martha's touring production would be returning to the City in two weeks, just a couple days after Alexis's return from California. And then her family would be whole again. At least, as whole as her family could ever be.

On that thought, her dinner finished, Kate moved into her office and opened up the shutters. Her eyes went at once and first, as always, to the picture of her mother's body, and then the post-it summarizing the bare facts of her murder. Kate felt a slight shudder go through her. _I won't let you down again, Mom._

She was fine, she told herself. She wasn't going down the rabbit hole again. She was in control. She didn't spend all her spare time obsessing over her mother's case. It wasn't like before.

She had only just started putting together the makeshift murder board on the shutters and the window in her office. She had spent a couple evenings on it since she had first decided to seriously look into her mom's case again.

Her eyes went over the other pictures, the post-its with the simple facts of the other murders, which she'd found from the quick copies she'd made of their files. The three other victims. Diane Cavanaugh. Scott Murray. Jennifer Stewart.

And Johanna Beckett.

Murdered on someone's order by Dick Coonan.

She remembered again what Dick Coonan had said. _Forget it. You'll never touch him._

Kate set her jaw. Whoever had ordered her mom to be killed had never met Detective Kate Beckett. And she had promised herself that she would bring justice to her mother's killer and she would not, could not, let her mom down again.

Kate's train of thought was abruptly interrupted at the sound of a knock on her door.

She frowned a little. She had no idea who that could be.

Purely out of habit—and an excess of caution—she quickly retreated into her bedroom to grab her gun and placed it on the small table just inside the inner door where it would be in easy reach. That done, she opened the door.

And stared.

"Cas—Castle?!"

Castle gave her a lopsided little grin. "Surprise."

She attempted to retrieve her jaw from where it was nearly scraping the floor. "I thought—what are you—you're supposed to be in Boston."

He shrugged a little. "The dinner sounded like it would be a bore so I claimed to be exhausted from all the travel and cancelled and then hopped on the next flight back to surprise you." He paused. "You going to let me in, Beckett?"

She didn't pause even to smile before she reached out, grabbed the lapels of his jacket, and pulled.

He let out a surprised laugh, releasing the handle of his rolling suitcase the moment it was inside, freeing up his hands. "Does this mean you missed me, Beckett?"

She smirked at him. "Shut up and kiss me, Castle."

He did.

Kate closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around him, and gave herself up to his kiss.

And somewhere inside her, she felt as if a little part of her that had been feeling off-balance settled back into place.

Castle. Castle was back. And for that moment, all was right in her world.

~ _To be continued…~_


	2. Chapter 1: A Deadly Affair

Author's Note: Wow, I'm amazed and so glad to see how excited you all are at seeing a sequel to "Feels Like Home" and one that will be going over the very-familiar and well-travelled territory of Season 3. I hope this first episode-related installment lives up to your expectations.

This one is a fun one, playing with 3x1 "A Deadly Affair," so there'll be some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 1_

"Where's Castle?"

Kate stopped and raised her eyebrows a little at Ryan. "Good morning to you too, Ryan. And yes, I'm doing just fine this morning," she greeted him with exaggerated politeness.

Ryan had the grace to look a little abashed at forgoing any sort of greeting. Admittedly, cops weren't exactly the most mannerly of people and she and the boys had long ago dropped any pretense of formality but even so, they usually exchanged greetings, even if it was limited to a "Hey, you."

And really, it wasn't as if she and Castle were joined at the hip that Ryan should be so surprised to see her walking into work alone.

Although, admittedly, she and Castle had come into work together almost every day in the month since he'd returned from his book tour and every day in the weeks before that, to say nothing of all the weeks she'd been staying at the loft.

Oh, fine, so maybe she could understand Ryan's surprise.

"Sorry. Morning, Beckett," Ryan corrected himself and then repeated, with a grin, "Where's Castle?"

She rolled her eyes a little. "Castle has a meeting at Black Pawn to go over his schedule for book signings for the next couple months." She gave Ryan a teasing smile. "So you're going to have to pine for him for at least the next few hours."

Castle hadn't been sure how long his meeting would go but he'd expected that it would last at least all morning. He'd spent yesterday evening with Alexis; he'd been wanting to spend as many evenings as possible with Alexis since she'd returned from camp, which Kate entirely understood, so they hadn't spent the night together either.

She and Castle were still figuring out how to balance their relationship with Castle's devotion to Alexis but for almost the first time in her life, Kate was serenely confident that she and Castle would figure it out. Whatever concerns she had about their relationship (and there were surprisingly few of them), Alexis was not one of them. It was true that in her experience, it was often the very things that drew one to a person that ended up causing trouble in a relationship eventually and certainly Castle's love for Alexis was one of the first things she'd fallen in love with in him but she loved Alexis too and so Kate wasn't worried.

Kate had almost resigned herself to another day of doing paperwork—worse, a day of doing paperwork without Castle around to enliven her day with his silly jokes or to bring her cups of coffee at intervals—when her phone rang and just like that, they were on a case.

Kate sent Castle a text to let him know they'd caught a case but then deliberately refrained from sending him another, even after they arrived at the scene to see Chloe Whitman's body sprawled on top of a tarp after apparently having fallen out a window. She didn't want to distract him from his meeting. And she didn't need to be constantly bombarding him with text messages. She knew Castle would go to the precinct when his meeting was over and she would see him then.

Lanie finding the piece of paper clutched in Chloe's hand led them to the address of another apartment in Tribeca. Registered to a Maya Santori, 32, Espo told her.

Kate paused and then her hand automatically reached for her gun as she realized that the door to the apartment was slightly ajar. She met Espo's eyes, nodded, and they all moved forward silently, pushing open the door.

Kate swept her eyes rapidly over the mess, taking in everything in a sweeping glance. She peripherally noted out of the corner of her eye a cardboard holder with two cups of coffee off to the side on the floor but then the sound of glass breaking in the other room distracted her.

She glanced at the boys, meeting their eyes, and moving as the well-trained unit they were, they all advanced quickly to the door, Kate moving in first, immediately followed by the boys covering her.

She kicked open the door, immediately focusing on the man, her eyes finding the gun in his hand. "NYPD!" she barked out. "Drop your weapon!"

"Hands in the air!" she heard Esposito shout.

"Drop it!" Ryan yelled at the exact same time.

The man turned, his hands going up, gun still in one hand.

From behind her, Kate heard a shot ring out, Ryan's voice yelling, "Drop the gun, slime-bag!" and the man ducked with a shout.

"Whoa!"

Wait. She knew that voice.

In that split second, Kate's mind flatly rejected what her senses were telling her, her world abruptly tilting sideways as she took in the scene in one comprehensive glance.

Castle. Holding a gun with a dead body—a body that had obviously been shot—lying on the bed.

No. Nonononono. It wasn't possible.

She knew him. She knew his heart, his mind—but did she really, a sudden voice in her head spoke up. Was it ever possible to truly know another person? He'd _said_ he had a meeting at Black Pawn—but how would she know? And how had he ended up in a dead young woman's apartment? Her cop's brain supplied the obvious answers in a heartbeat—an affair gone wrong, an argument, a gun, murder. _Cheating on her_ , the same voice in her head nagged at her, the voice of all her deepest insecurities, the tiny corner of her heart that expected to be disappointed in people, always so quick to doubt.

"Castle?" she choked out.

"Beckett!" he exclaimed, his eyes automatically lighting up as he recognized her, and he dropped his hands, starting to take a step forward.

"Freeze!" Espo shouted.

Castle started, the reality of the scene, what they saw, crashing down on him. She saw it dawn on his expression—and in that moment, she knew.

"Okay, easy, guys, it's not what it looks like," he said with a rather nervous chuckle, ostensibly addressing all three of them, but he was looking only at her.

She didn't know how many times she'd heard someone say that at a crime scene.

Kate Beckett had been a cop for eight years, had been in Homicide for five years, had been a homicide detective for three years. She was good at her job. She knew how to do her job.

And she knew perfectly well what her job required her to do now. She was a cop, Detective Kate Beckett. She had the evidence of her own eyes. She knew that, as she had told Castle himself a few times, 99 times out of 100 in their line of work, when they found someone standing over a dead body with a gun, that person was the killer. Nothing else mattered, not even the certainty of her own mind and heart. She was a cop and she had a job to do and right now, her job, her duty, was to arrest Richard Castle.

And for the first time in Kate's entire career, she knew she couldn't do her job. No, wouldn't do her job.

She holstered her gun.

"Beckett?" Esposito asked, frowning at her.

Kate looked at Castle and then at Esposito and Ryan, her boys, who still had their guns out and trained on Castle.

"Kate? You know me. You know I wouldn't—"

Kate ignored Castle's words, even as the sudden uncertainty, the apprehension, lacing his words pinched her heart. Yes, she knew him. But now wasn't the time to reassure him.

"Javi. Kevin," she used the boys' first names that she almost never used deliberately. "Stand down." It was an order.

Esposito's jaw slackened a little and she knew he understood exactly what she was doing. "Beckett, you—"

"I know, Espo," she cut him off. She did know. Part of her was stunned that she was doing it, a small part of her was shrieking at her that she was being stupid, a foolish, naïve thing, putting her emotions ahead of her rational mind in a way that was unlike her. But she had made her choice. She might be burning her bridges and if she turned out to be wrong—but she pushed the thought aside. She wouldn't think it. She couldn't think it. She had thought, months ago, that love was like stepping off a cliff with only a hope and a prayer that Castle's love would give her wings. She had well and truly stepped off the cliff now.

"Castle," she finally addressed him but forced herself not to meet his eyes directly or soften her voice—she was Beckett now, had to be Beckett, not Kate—"give the gun to Ryan."

Ryan—bless him—took his cue and stepped forward, automatically pulling out an evidence bag, letting Castle gingerly drop the gun inside the bag. "Sorry about, uh, you know," he ventured, giving Castle a rather hesitant smile.

"Almost shooting me?" Castle finished for him.

"Yeah, that," Ryan agreed.

Castle studied Ryan for a moment during which Ryan almost visibly squirmed before he quirked a faint grin and quipped, "I think you need to practice more. You missed."

Ryan gave a brief chuckle and stepped back.

"Okay, now we'll all go back to the precinct together and Castle can help us figure out what happened here," Beckett said with as much forced casualness as she could muster, trying to sound as if she were suggesting they just go out for drinks rather than deliberately failing to do her job by not arresting an obvious suspect, not cuffing him, and carefully not phrasing her words as if Castle was going to be officially interrogated.

She caught Espo's dubious look but he listened, thankfully. She hadn't doubted that Ryan would listen—Ryan, of all people, would be inclined to give Castle the benefit of the doubt, understood about loyalty and trust and emotions. Esposito, she had not been entirely sure of. Espo was as much about the evidence as she was. She and Espo worked well together because they were both no-nonsense professionals who worked hard, did their jobs, and followed the rules.

Or at least, she always had been before. Until today. When her duty to the NYPD, her loyalty to her job, had come into direct conflict with the dictates of, well, her heart.

Kate was not a rule-breaker, not anymore. The only thing that had ever before driven her to break NYPD rules had been her mother's case, the most important thing in her life, the central, most important loyalty of her heart.

Now, she realized rather belatedly, that Castle was more important to her than her job. She didn't know when it had happened but somehow it had.

She and Castle followed Esposito and Ryan out of the bedroom, Espo calling for a CSU team as they walked.

They were almost across the front room when Castle spoke up, "Oh, Beckett, the coffees over there on the floor are for us. I brought them with me just now."

Kate gave him a quick smile, suddenly feeling a coil of tension inside her unwind. She'd been right. She _knew_ she'd been right. And then, breaking yet another rule since technically, they shouldn't remove anything from the scene until CSU had arrived to catalogue everything, she bent to pick up the coffees and handed one to Castle.

He accepted it with a faint smile and she saw his lips part and knew he wanted to say something, thank her maybe for believing him, for not arresting him, but she gave him a quick shake of her head. They would talk later. After this was cleared up and she learned if Captain Montgomery was going to ream her out for what she'd just done.

Back at the precinct, Kate followed protocol just enough by pointing Castle into one of the interrogation rooms, as opposed to the conference room or the break room. He wasn't under arrest but he was a witness.

Esposito directed Castle into a chair with a rather brusque "Sit."

Castle sat, no doubt deciding from Espo's tone that now wasn't the time to be a wiseass, for once.

Espo took one of the chairs on the other side of the table.

Kate looked at the other chair and then inwardly flinched. No. Oh no, she couldn't sit down across this table from Castle. Could not face him as if he were another suspect. She thought for barely a moment but remained standing, moving to stand beside the table, her body somewhat angled towards Espo. Not quite facing off against Espo, not quite obviously at Castle's side, but not quite not either.

Espo glanced quickly up at her before he began, "So, Castle, you wanna tell us how you ended up standing over a dead body with a gun in your hand when we thought you were at a meeting with your publisher?"

Castle blinked. "My meeting ended."

"And you went over to Maya Santori's apartment immediately after? Why?"

"She called me."

Kate stiffened a little in spite of herself. Castle had known the victim. Stupid Kate, she scolded herself, had she been imagining he'd accidentally stumbled into the victim's apartment building and her apartment without knowing her?

"She called you and invited you over to her place? What was your relationship with the victim?"

Castle dropped any pretense of talking to Espo and looked up at Kate instead as he answered, "There was no relationship."

"So you don't know the victim at all and a total stranger somehow got your number, invited you over to her apartment, and you went? For what, some random booty call?"

Kate fought not to glare at Esposito. She knew he was playing the bad cop, being tough on Castle because of the conflict of interest inherent in the fact that Castle was a friend of his, was more than a friend of Kate's. But she still found herself resenting the question a little.

"No! That's not—" Castle glared at Espo. "Are you trying to be an ass?" he asked with some irritation before he looked back up at Kate. "It wasn't like that. She's an artist—was an artist. I bought a couple sculptures from her a year or so ago, you know, the one of the figure on a horse on the bookshelf in front of my office and the one of the dancing girl in the small alcove in the house in the Hamptons. You asked about it, remember, on the tour I gave you?"

"Focus, Castle," Kate scolded mildly.

"Why did the vic call you?" Espo asked.

"She said she was in trouble and she couldn't go to the cops," Castle answered, still addressing Kate rather than Esposito.

"And she called you?" The skepticism in Espo's voice could have sliced through rock.

"She knew about my relationship with you—" he caught her look—so not the time to be emphasizing their personal relationship when she'd just deliberately refused to do her job on the strength of that personal relationship—and stopped abruptly, amending his statement, "knew about my relationship with the NYPD and she thought I could help."

"Help how?" Kate asked, forestalling Espo, her own curiosity getting the better of her.

Castle shrugged a little. "She didn't say. She just said to come over and she sounded freaked enough that I agreed automatically. I was in line to pick up our coffees but afterwards I went to her place. When I got there, the door was open and the place was trashed. I was worried about her so I put down the coffee and went looking for her and found her." He paused and then went on, a little grimly, "Dead on the bed and there was a gun on the floor."

"So you, being the expert veteran of dozens of crime scenes, decided to pick up the murder weapon to, what, ensure that we had your prints?" Espo asked sardonically.

Castle flicked his gaze to Espo. "Did you miss the part where I said that she was already dead when I got there?" He looked back up at Kate. "I was just about to call you when I heard the noises coming from the next room and thought that whoever killed her had come back so I picked up the gun to defend myself. And that's when you, Esposito, and Annie-Get-Your-Gun with the itchy trigger finger," Castle said with a pointed look at the glass, behind which he knew Ryan was standing, "came bursting through the door."

Kate permitted herself the barest smile at Castle's razzing of Ryan—he was going to get weeks of giving Ryan a hard time out of Ryan's having almost shot him—and turned to Esposito. "Happy now?"

He shot her an expressive look and Kate felt herself flushing a little—damn it—and quickly grabbed the folder on the table and handed it to Castle. She could still do her job.

"Do you know her?" she asked crisply, in her best no-nonsense Detective Beckett tone, "Chloe Whitman. She was shot to death. Your friend's address was found in her hands after she was killed."

Castle straightened as he studied Chloe's DMV photo. "Another murder," he murmured more to himself than to her. He looked up at both her and Esposito. "What's the connection?"

"You tell us. You were the one holding a gun," Espo retorted.

Kate shot him a quelling look but at that moment, the door opened and Captain Montgomery poked his head in. "Wrong gun, Detective. The victim was shot with a .45; Castle was holding a .38." He paused and then fixed his eyes on Kate. "Beckett, a word with you."

"Yes, sir." Kate nodded and hoped her sudden flutter of apprehension wasn't visible in her expression as she followed the Captain into the observation room, which Ryan immediately vacated on a look from Montgomery. Kate relaxed marginally at the location. If Montgomery were really going to call her on the carpet, he would have used his office.

Montgomery waited until Ryan had closed the door behind him before he fixed a questioning look at her. "So, do you want to tell me the story about how three homicide detectives find Castle standing over a dead body with a gun in his hand and you _don't_ arrest him for murder?" He raised one eyebrow. "Did you not feel that was probable cause for an arrest, Detective?" he asked with withering sarcasm.

Kate forcibly suppressed a wince. The situation was more than probable cause to justify an arrest; it was practically guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, even if it was circumstantial. She knew that perfectly well. "I can explain, Sir," she began.

Montgomery gave her an expectant look. "Do tell."

"I… knew he hadn't done it, sir," Kate finally said.

"You knew? Based on what evidence?"

"I recognized the coffee he'd brought with him in the outer room of the apartment," she explained quickly, with something less than complete candor. "It's the coffee he always brings for himself and for me," she said, feeling added heat in her cheeks. But she knew Montgomery would have long ago noticed Castle's habit of bringing coffee for both of them. "The most probable motive for Castle killing the victim would have been if he'd had a relationship with her," she went on steadily. "But a man having an affair doesn't bring the coffee he'd bought for himself and another woman with him in meeting with the other woman."

It was not the best explanation, she knew that, but it was the only one she could give.

Montgomery held her gaze steadily for a long moment. Kate only kept herself from squirming or blurting out further explanations by reason of her training and was reminded all over again that Montgomery was a damn good homicide detective, a master interrogator.

Kate was approximately 10 seconds away from breaking down and admitting that she'd really decided she believed Castle hadn't killed Maya Santori because she'd listened to her heart, because she trusted him.

And then Montgomery's expression eased. "That makes sense. Good observation, Beckett." He paused. "But I will say, Detective, that you are damn lucky that the ballistics support Castle's story because without that sort of solid proof you would have a lot more explaining to do."

She nodded. "I know, sir."

He waved his hand dismissively. "That's all, Detective. Now get out there and find a connection between the victims."

"Yes, sir."

Castle was, of course, waiting for her just outside the observation room. "Everything okay, Beckett?"

She gave him a fleeting, reassuring smile. "Yeah."

"So what's our next move?" he asked eagerly.

Kate hid a smile, feeling some of her lingering tension ease at this characteristic display of eagerness. So very Castle. "Try to figure out the connection between the victims."

He nodded. "So Maya was an artist, a sculptor. What did Chloe Whitman do?"

"She was a high school chemistry teacher."

"Hm, not the most obvious pairing of professions," Castle mused aloud.

Kate directed a look at Espo and Ryan who had joined her and Castle at her desk. "Get warrants for the victims' phone and financials to see if we can find a connection there," she directed.

Espo nodded. "On it."

"Castle and I are going to head to the morgue to see if Lanie found any evidence tying the two victims together." Kate turned to Castle as they left the precinct. "You knew Maya. What kind of trouble do you think she was in?"

"I honestly don't know. It's not like she and I were friends or anything. We spoke for maybe a sum total of 5 minutes when I bought the sculptures from her and it was only about her art and she said she'd read one of my books. I gave her my number so she could arrange for the sculptures to be delivered but that was it."

"Hm, okay. She said she couldn't go to the police about it, though?"

"Yeah," he confirmed.

"Then whatever she was involved in was almost certainly illegal," Kate deduced, her statement overlapping neatly with Castle's "So she must have been involved in something criminal."

She and Castle exchanged quick smiles at this evidence of their minds working in tandem and they speculated a little more as they made their way to the morgue and then afterwards, Castle's theories becoming increasingly far-fetched, characteristically for him, as he tried to piece together a theory about what sort of criminal enterprise a high school chemistry teacher and an artist could be involved in. Kate's favorite may have been that Chloe was making some sort of poisonous chemical to assassinate some high-profile buyer of one of Maya's artworks with the poison being smuggled into the buyer's house inside the sculpture like a modern-day equivalent of the Trojan horse.

Esposito treated that particular theory with derision and Kate sternly suppressed her smile at Castle's exaggerated pout.

"See you in the morning, boys," Kate said. "The victims' phone and financials should arrive in the morning and hopefully they'll help us find the connection. Come on, Castle, I'll drive you home."

Castle glanced at her once they were in her car. "Kate."

"Hmm?"

"Thanks for not arresting me."

She tossed him a smirk. "You don't want something as prosaic as an arrest for murder on your so-impressive rap sheet?"

He laughed but sobered quickly enough. "I know it looked bad, what you and the boys saw when you walked in." He paused. "Why didn't you arrest me? I've been shadowing you long enough to know that's what you should have done."

She lifted one shoulder into a half-shrug, keeping her eyes on the road. "I knew you hadn't done it."

"What made you so sure?"

She glanced at him and took advantage of a red light to take one hand off the wheel to give his arm a brief squeeze. "The way you looked when you realized it was me and the way you said my name." It was true—but it was her heart that had recognized it more than her head had. For someone who prided herself on being rational, on relying on solid evidence, she was finding that her trust for Castle was stronger than even she had realized. Stronger than her doubts.

"Why—"

"You were glad to see me."

"I'm always glad to see you."

She gave him a quick smile, feeling a little flutter in her chest at his simple honest words. "Yeah, well, you would hardly have been glad to see me if you'd just killed Maya Santori."

"Thank you for trusting me."

She shot him a teasing look. "Nah, it wasn't trust so much as knowing that you're not such an idiot as to be glad to see a cop if you've just killed someone."

He laughed. "Are you saying you wouldn't help me hide a body if I ever did actually kill someone?"

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. "Have you met me? I'm a homicide detective. In what universe do you think I would help you hide a body?"

Castle gave an exaggerated sigh. "A man can hope, can't he?"

She bit her lip to keep from smiling. Silly, ridiculous man. "Hope that he'll be able to persuade a cop into a conspiracy to commit a felony? Are you trying to make me suspicious of you?"

"I'm just saying that I could be a criminal mastermind if I wanted to be," he huffed with exaggerated dignity, "Don't underestimate my evil imagination and my powers of persuasion, Beckett."

She laughed at him. "Sure you could be, Professor Moriarty," she agreed sarcastically.

He made a face at her. "That makes you Sherlock Holmes, which would make us mortal enemies, and I refuse to be enemies with you, Beckett."

She smirked. "Well, you're not so bad at the annoying sidekick gig if that's more to your taste."

"I thought we agreed I was your partner," he pouted.

She tossed him a smile and gave in—because, even though she hated to admit it, his pout kind of worked and, after all, she had been reminded just that day how much she trusted him. "Yeah, you're my partner, Castle."

He lifted his arms in a gesture of triumph. "Ha! Victory is mine!" he exulted.

She rolled her eyes. And there was the 12-year-old. Really, how was she in a relationship with this man-child?

Only to have the question answered for her when she had parked outside of the loft and gotten out of her car.

He paused, momentarily hemming her in against her car, as he met her eyes. "Seriously, Beckett, did you honestly not wonder for a second if I'd actually killed Maya?"

"Maybe only for one second. It's like you said, Castle. I know you." She knew his heart, knew his kindness and his compassion, knew how much he would do for anyone he loved. It was, after all, why she loved him. And she knew he loved her.

How could she not want to be with this man?

"Thank you, Kate," he said softly just before he kissed her, softly, before drawing back and slipping his hand into hers. "Coming up for dinner?"

She smiled at him and briefly tilted her head to let her cheek brush his shoulder. "Of course. I want to see Alexis and Martha."

He affected an injured expression. "Oh, I see how it is. It's nice to know you don't care about seeing me."

She laughed and nudged his elbow with hers. "Get used to it, Castle. I told you before that I like Alexis better than you, remember?" she teased.

They stepped onto the elevator and he promptly crowded her against the wall, dropping his head to kiss the spot just behind her ear lobe which he knew always made a shiver of heat go through her and then whispering huskily into her ear, "I bet I can make you change your mind about that."

Yeah, she knew he could too. When he set out to do so, he could have had her agreeing that the sky was green as long as he stopped torturing her with his hands and his lips and his tongue. But naturally, she wasn't about to admit it out loud. "You can try," she taunted him breathlessly.

He straightened up and stepped away from her just as the elevator arrived at his floor. "Challenge accepted, Detective," he said as briskly as if they had just bet on the outcome of a sports game.

She was going to lose the challenge—not easily and not without putting up a fight but she fully expected to lose—and damned if he didn't manage to make losing these teasing challenges very, very enjoyable.

She grinned to herself. She was having a good day after all.

* * *

Kate frowned at the murder board. A high school chemistry teacher, an artist, and a guy who fixed vending machines all dead—but why?

She'd been hoping a night spent away from the case, sleeping on it as it were, would have dislodged some insight but this morning, she was still at a loss.

She looked up as Castle appeared and handed her a cup of coffee along with a smile.

"Good morning, Beckett."

She had to work to keep her own smile toned down, wondering if he had any idea how much his smiles, the happiness in his voice and in his eyes, affected her. She loved the way he said "good morning" to her, the most commonplace greeting, but he made the words seem special. And she remembered, again, what he'd said to her the other day, that he was always glad to see her.

Just as she was always glad to see him.

"Anything new?" he asked.

"We tracked down Todd McCutchin's fiancée; she's on her way."

"Anything on their background checks?"

She let out a huff. "We went as far back as grade school and nothing has popped yet."

"Hmm." He tapped his fingers against his chin absently. "Maybe they're—"

"Don't tell me, you think they're spies," she interrupted him.

He gave her a look. "Top CIA agents targeted for termination is what I was going to say and how did you know?"

She rolled her eyes a little. "Give me some credit, Castle, you suggest the CIA at least once on just about every case we work on."

"Yes, well, the law of averages demands that I'll eventually be right."

She smirked. "Or, you know, some might say that theorizing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is a sign of insanity."

"Hey! My theories are helpful!"

"Sure they are," she agreed with palpable sarcasm.

He straightened up. "Oh yeah? I bet I figure out how they're connected before you do."

She sternly hid a smile. Really, it was so _fun_ to tease him. "I'll take that bet. But if I win, you can't mention the CIA as a theory on any of our cases for the next month."

He huffed. "Well, that's a boring wager."

"Yeah? What do you want if you win—not that you will," she added, taunting him more to see the look on his face than anything else.

Only to rather regret the teasing in the next second as his eyes lowered, wandering up and down her body slowly and thoroughly until she felt his gaze like a caress. She felt her body reacting automatically, her nipples peaking, liquid heat pooling low in her stomach. She was suddenly thankful that she was sitting on her desk because her knees no longer felt entirely solid beneath her.

"Oh, I'm sure I'll think of something," he murmured and she felt a shiver of heat streak through her because, damn it, his voice had lowered into that bedroom voice of his and he knew perfectly well what that tone did to her.

She narrowed her eyes at him and reminded herself firmly that they were in the middle of the precinct and had a case to solve. Now was absolutely not the time to be thinking about the different things he could do to and with her when they were alone.

He settled back in his chair with a smug expression on his face that made her want to smack him—and haul him into the supply closet and do things to him that would bring him to his knees.

Bother. Damn infuriating man.

He seemed entirely at ease and then he looked over at the boys and back at her. "Wait, what if they figure it out first?"

They both glanced over at Ryan and Esposito and then their eyes met, faint identical smirks appearing on their faces as they said in unison, "Nah."

Kate sternly schooled her expression back to sobriety as Ryan and Esposito looked up and then came over.

"So, what do you think our next move should be?" Ryan asked.

"Go through our victims' financials. There's got to be a link between these three and the evidence for it has got to show up somewhere," she answered crisply but had to hide her amusement when Castle, who normally viewed going through a victim's financials as the "boring" part of a case that he usually tried to duck out of doing, agreed to pore through these victims' financials with alacrity.

He was seriously trying to win this silly bet of theirs. She felt a flicker of arousal at the thought and had to tamp it down. She wasn't going to think about it. She was calm, capable Detective Beckett and she had three murders to solve.

And she could so totally figure out the connection between the victims before Castle could.

Bet or not, Kate found herself working with Castle rather than competitively against him—it was so easy to fall into their usual back-and-forth of building theory together, talking aloud to go over the evidence. It was something that still amazed her sometimes when she thought about it, how well they worked together. She and Castle were so different, really, in the way they approached cases, the way they thought about things, but somehow, their differences fit together.

She had to hide her smile when she saw Castle's eyes light up the way they always did when pieces fell into place. It was so, well, cute how excited he got when he figured something out and she found herself too distracted in watching him to realize that she was letting him win until it was too late. And then she couldn't help but allow him his moment of triumph when he proved that Chloe, Maya, and Todd had been part of a counterfeiting scheme.

And when their eyes met as they both blurted out, in unison, "I think I know who the killer is," Kate felt, again, this sense of connection with another person—with him—that she'd never felt before she'd met him and didn't think she would ever feel again with anyone else.

She didn't really believe in destiny but sometimes, in moments like this, she couldn't help but think that after all, she belonged with this man.

Afterwards, Kate thought that, as Castle would put it, the universe was almost trying to prove how well she and Castle worked together, arranging it so that they each fired their guns near simultaneously, taking down Kitty and Earl as if they had practiced it.

The moment was over too quickly—thankfully—allowing her no time to feel any fear or worry when she'd seen Kitty pointing a gun at Castle. She had only been able to act, instinct and training kicking in.

She only felt a belated reaction when he came up to her, wordlessly giving her back her backup piece, and then gripped her hand with his, squeezing it hard. She suddenly felt the ridiculous urge to move into his arms and she could see in his expression that he felt the same wish but this wasn't the time.

"You okay?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah. You?"

He nodded. "Fine."

She managed a faint smile. "Thanks for saving my life."

"Always. And right back at you."

She squeezed his hand before releasing it, forcing herself to return to full Detective Beckett mode as she went to help Esposito and Ryan in getting Kitty and Earl safely in the back of their patrol cars.

Back at the precinct, Esposito and Ryan took point on supervising Kitty and Earl as their arrests were processed and then sent to get their bullet wounds treated while Kate and Castle updated Captain Montgomery on the outcome of the case.

That done, she and Castle worked together to take down the murder board.

"So, I guess you won the bet," she said as they finished.

"Yeah," he grinned and then gave her an exaggerated leer, making her laugh even as she felt delicious anticipation spark in her body. "So…"

She glanced around to ensure that no one was watching them at the moment and then moved in close to him and let her hand slide quickly down his stomach and lower. He startled and shot her a look, his eyes already midnight blue with arousal.

She smirked and removed her hand as she leaned in to whisper into his ear, "Go home and have dinner with Alexis and tell her you'll be out tonight. And then come to my place and you can have your reward for winning the bet."

"See you later," he agreed immediately and almost tripped over his own feet in his rush to leave.

She smiled to herself, beginning to ponder what she should wear tonight when he came over. She might have let him win, technically, but when it came to bets like these, they both won.


	3. Chapter 2: Under the Gun

Author's Note: As much as I liked "He's Dead, She's Dead," I wasn't sure how to fit it in to add much to Castle and Beckett's relationship (but I still hope to find a way to include something about "Alexander" at some point and, of course, Castle making Beckett believe in the possibility of magic.) At any rate, moving right along with a rather more serious chapter this time as it deals with 3x3, "Under the Gun." It's mostly a post-ep but starts just before the end of the ep so there's some familiar dialogue ahead. Also, I switch POV's in the middle, which I normally don't do, but felt it was necessary this time. I think it should be fairly clear where the switch happens.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 2_

Martha and Alexis looked up as Castle and Kate entered the loft.

"Dad! Kate, did you find it?" Alexis asked eagerly.

"Yes, we did!" Castle declared gleefully. "Just call me Richard Castle, Treasure Hunter."

"Yay!" Martha cheered.

He threw Kate an exaggerated pout. "But _somebody_ needed to be a spoilsport and insisted we return the entire treasure to the rightful owner."

Kate rolled her eyes and settled on the couch next to Martha, directing a smile at Alexis. "So, Alexis, I hear you're getting a Vespa scooter," she said, deliberately changing the subject away from the return of the treasure that Castle had spent the entire drive back to the loft harping on.

"Actually, I'm not so sure about that," Alexis admitted, giving a rather sheepish smile.

Castle gave Alexis a surprised look. "You changed your mind?"

Alexis smiled and got up. "I decided not to get the scooter. I realized once I left the precinct how wrong it was for me to sell those light sabers. But I was so caught up in wanting the bike that I convinced myself I was just trading one thing for another. But playing pretend with you was one of the best parts of my childhood and it means more to me than a shiny, new scooter ever could."

Castle's expression softened, his eyes brightening up with so much love and pride, as he wrapped his arms around Alexis. "I'm so proud of you," he told her, his voice a little husky with emotion.

Kate leaned her shoulder against Martha's as she smiled fondly at Alexis and Castle. She knew Castle had been more hurt than he'd admitted even to her at Alexis thinking about selling the light sabers. His memories of playing with Alexis were so precious to him. And yes, he was sentimental. She loved that about him.

Alexis smiled against Castle's shoulder. "Proud enough to buy me a new scooter?" she asked hopefully.

Kate suppressed a laugh. Alexis didn't really look it but she was certainly single-minded in going after what she wanted.

Castle made a small face at her over Alexis's head before he drew back and met Alexis's eyes. "No. I made a deal and it would be wrong to break it."

Alexis's shoulders slumped a little while Kate waited. There was an almost imperceptible quirk of one corner of his mouth and she knew Castle and his love of dramatic pauses. More than that, she'd rather been expecting him to change his mind about buying the scooter for Alexis because she knew his generosity, how much he loved to indulge the people he loved and Alexis was at the top of that list.

"But there's nothing in that deal that prevents me from buying myself a scooter and maybe letting you borrow it from time to time." Kate smiled to herself at the mental image of Castle on a scooter and made a mental note to make sure to take a picture so she could show the boys, give Castle a hard time. But she knew perfectly well that Castle would get a blast out of riding the scooter—not that she expected he would actually use it much. He was buying it for Alexis, whatever he said.

Alexis gave a tiny little bounce. "Are you sure?"

"Sure. I can send you to the store for batteries for light sabers," Castle quipped.

"Thanks, Dad. Oh, and when you have the scooter, maybe I can borrow the car!"

Kate laughed out loud at the way Castle gaped. Oh, Alexis was good, always managing to leave Castle surprised and sometimes speechless. "She got you there, Castle."

Alexis looked back at Kate and grinned cheekily. "I have to keep Dad on his toes somehow."

Kate nodded approvingly. "It does him good."

"That's right, it does," Martha agreed.

"Hey!" Castle protested. "I'm standing right here!" He gave an exaggerated huff. "You really need to stop ganging up on me. It's not fair. And I am the genius that figured out the secret to the treasure map and where the treasure was hidden!"

Alexis only laughed as she ran off. "I need to go tell my friends about the scooter!"

Martha only chuckled and stood up to give Castle a comforting little pat on the shoulder before she, too, went upstairs. "Don't look so surprised, Richard. Alexis has been getting the better of you since she was around six. You should be used to it by now."

He grimaced and pouted and Kate laughed.

He sat down heavily on the couch. "How safe are these scooters? Did I do the right thing?" he asked, rather rhetorically.

Kate sobered. "If it'll help, I can give Alexis some safety tips on riding it. It can't be all that much different from riding a motorcycle safely in the city."

"Would you? Thanks, Kate."

She shrugged a little but gave him a quick smile. "No thanks necessary, Castle. You know how much I care about Alexis. I don't want her getting hurt either."

"Still. Thank you."

Kate felt herself flushing a little, her heart fluttering almost in spite of herself at the look in his eyes, the sincerity in his voice. Damn. She didn't know how he could still fluster her the way he did, abash her with the sheer intensity of his feelings. Not because she didn't know he loved her or even because she felt less than he did but just because of how easily, how openly, he showed his feelings. She loved him—it scared her how much she loved him—but she was not comfortable with showing her emotions. She wasn't demonstrative, didn't wear her heart on her sleeve. But he did. And it terrified her a little sometimes when he looked at her the way he did, as if she were a miracle, because she couldn't imagine how she deserved it. Because she couldn't help but wonder sometimes if he hadn't put her up on a pedestal and what would happen when she inevitably fell off that pedestal and let him down.

The way she had put Royce on a pedestal.

The stark reminder of what she'd just had to do this evening stung with renewed hurt because of the last few minutes when she'd been able to forget about it. Royce. Oh god, Royce.

She ducked her head, avoiding his gaze, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "You'd better go shower, Castle. You're filthy."

He gave her an exaggerated leer as he stood up. "Care to help me get clean?"

She felt a swift flicker of irritation at his persistent joking, bordering on insensitivity in her current mood. "No, you can do it yourself," she said curtly and then added, "Just give me your dirty clothes. I'll get them started in the wash."

"You don't need to, Beckett. I can take care of that," he said cautiously.

"I said I would do it and I can. I need to wash my clothes too."

"Okay, fine," he retorted, an edge in his voice now, clearly getting irritated himself at her tone. "Do whatever you want to. It's not like I can ever tell you what to do."

He stalked off into his bedroom and Kate waited in roweling annoyance until she heard his shower turn on before she herself went into his bedroom to find his clothes had been left in a heap on the floor. She made quick work of changing into sweats and appropriating one of his t-shirts to sleep in as she usually did before grabbing up his dirty clothes, along with her own, and then, with a little shrug, dropping them all into the laundry hamper in his closet before picking up the hamper and going out to the small room off the front hall where the washer and dryer were kept.

The simple, mundane task of sorting through his laundry and tossing her own clothes into the washer along with his calmed her irritation, her mood softening yet further at the sheer domesticity of the action, of washing their clothes together. It was something she hadn't done before. When she'd been staying at the loft, she had obviously done her own laundry while he had done his (and Martha's) while Alexis usually did her own. And that hadn't changed after they got together.

She'd been unfair to snap at him. She knew her mood had changed swiftly with the thought of Royce and her own lingering upset over Royce had made her snap at Castle when he hadn't deserved it.

She sighed a little. After all, maybe she had been wrong to come back to the loft tonight when Castle asked. She was too used to being alone when she was upset over something, too used to not having to try to soften the edges of her own bad temper in order to avoid abrading anyone else's temper. But when Castle had asked after they had brought the treasure back to the precinct and arranged for it to be processed and then returned to the owners, she had agreed. She had thought that the distraction of having Martha and Alexis around would help and she had told herself it would be good, was part of taking down her wall, to be around other people when she was upset, to not retreat into automatic solitude.

She knew, too, that Castle had been trying to distract her by making so many voluble complaints about having to return the treasure to the owners, interspersed with bouts of his trademark boyish enthusiasm at the very idea of digging up a hidden treasure. It had worked too, maybe even too well, given how badly she'd reacted when once again reminded of how she'd had to arrest Royce.

 _Oh Royce, how could you do it?_

Kate briefly covered her face with her hands, her eyes pricking with tears. Again.

She had been so happy to see him too. It had been so many years but he hadn't changed, had still made her laugh, her heart reacting until for a little while, she'd felt as if she were still the rookie, still the girl fresh out of college and the academy who hung on every word out of her training officer's mouth. For a little while, it had barely even mattered how much had changed since then, that she was no longer drowning, no longer alone. For a little while, it had almost not mattered that she was in love with someone else. He had still been Royce. Royce, who was, she realized now, probably the first man she'd really had serious feelings about.

Royce, who was sitting in a holding cell now, one of those same holding cells that he himself had put so many people in.

Suddenly restless, Kate pushed herself to her feet, moving into Castle's office and then into his bedroom to see that he'd finished showering and was sitting up in his bed reading. He glanced up when she came in but returned his eyes immediately to his book and her heart pinched a little at this evidence that he was still—justifiably—out of temper with her.

She made quick work of her own shower and preparations for bed before joining him.

He still didn't say anything, was quite ostentatiously focused on his book, although Kate was relatively sure that he wasn't actually reading. She knew the way his eyes moved over a page, knew the way he occasionally mouthed phrases or sentences he liked to himself as he read. He was too still now as he stared at his book, as intently as if he were trying to see if he could bore a hole into it with his eyes.

After a moment, she scooted over and nestled her head against his shoulder, wrapping her arm around him. "I'm sorry, Castle. I shouldn't have snapped at you. It wasn't fair."

He put the book down on his nightstand immediately (and she peripherally noted that she'd been right that he hadn't actually been reading when she noted that he didn't bother to move the bookmark from where it had been) and put his own arm around her. "I understand, Kate. You had a bad day and you lashed out. It happens."

Kate tightened her arm around him and turned her face into his shoulder for a moment. This, she thought, might be what she loved best about him, his boundless, instinctive empathy, the compassion that was so much at the core of his kindness. It was what made him so quick to forgive. "I'm still sorry. You didn't deserve my bad temper."

He pressed a kiss to her hair. "It really is okay, Kate. I seem to remember snapping at you too."

Not until she'd snapped at him first but Kate left that unsaid. It wasn't like he didn't know it; he was just trying to assuage her guilt, characteristically for him. He really was so good to her.

A comfortable silence settled over them. After a little while, he shifted, slid down until he was lying down and she followed, settling against him again, her head on his shoulder. And Kate found she felt better, eased and comforted just from being held like this, from being with him. He really was her safe place, wasn't he? Her shelter from the storm. Her Castle.

"I'm sorry about Royce," he finally murmured. "I know… it hurts when someone you loved lets you down."

 _Someone you loved_. He said it so easily, so steadily, and she suddenly realized that he had known she'd lied when she'd said that all she'd said over the phone to Royce was to give the boys time to make the trace. She supposed she should have known he would know.

Castle felt Kate's sudden tension at his words. He had been, not exactly testing her, but wanting just to be sure that he'd been right, even though he'd already known he was. Felt the need to confirm his belief as if prodding at a sore spot, to know for sure that Kate really had loved Royce once.

He couldn't even identify exactly what it was he felt. It wasn't jealousy, not really, in spite of the fact that hearing Beckett tell Royce that she had been in love with him had hit him like a punch to the ribs. He wasn't jealous. He really wasn't. He had more faith in Kate, in her loyalty and her feelings for him, than that. He _did_. He just… wasn't happy about it and maybe, yes, there was some doubt, fear, in that because he, of all people, knew how powerful memory and nostalgia could be, how the ghosts of first love could seem to resurrect past feelings. He'd felt the tug of it himself when he'd run into Kyra again just months ago when her bridesmaid had been murdered. He'd felt confused, honestly not sure how much of what he felt on seeing Kyra again had been for Kyra as she was now and how much was just the memory of what he'd once felt for her.

He could understand what it must have been like for Beckett to run into Royce again.

And really, it would be the height of hypocrisy for him to be upset to know that he wasn't the first man Kate had ever loved since, after all, he had loved women before Kate too.

He didn't know what it was he felt; it wasn't really jealousy. But he couldn't deny the way his gut had twisted a little at seeing the way Beckett had smiled at Royce, the way she'd laughed at Royce's stories, her real happy laugh, the one that lit up her entire face, made her eyes dance with green and gold sparks. But he'd smiled and nodded slightly when Beckett had glanced at him after offering to buy Royce a drink, not exactly giving permission since it wasn't up to him, but acquiescing to it at least and had felt better at the smile Beckett had given him in response. She'd wanted to catch up with an old friend, her former training officer. He understood. He did.

But seeing how happy Beckett had been to see Royce had been nothing compared to the kick in the gut that it had been to see Beckett's face when she'd returned to the precinct after the boys had told her that Royce had never turned Random in after all and she had had to put Royce's DMV photo up on the murder board as a suspect. To see how pale she'd become, white to her lips, to see the faint lines of tension around her mouth, the tension in her jaw. To see the way her eyes had darkened with hurt and betrayal.

Seeing Kate happy, even if it was because of another man, was one thing; seeing Kate hurt and sad was another thing entirely, had stabbed at his heart.

He wanted her to talk to him, tell him about Royce, about how she felt. Or he sort of did. As her lover, part of him really didn't want to hear her talk about her feelings for another man but as her friend, her partner, the man who was in love with her, he wanted to comfort her, be there for her, and if listening to her talk about another man would help, then he would listen. Comforting Kate mattered much more to him than his own petty doubts and insecurities.

More importantly, he wanted her to talk to him because he knew how hard it was for Kate to talk about her feelings, about the things that hurt her the most, and her opening up to him about Royce would be evidence of her wall coming down. He wanted her to let him in, to know that she could talk to him about anything and he would listen and be there for her.

By now, he knew her too well to think that he could ask her outright or that a long silence would make her talk. What he could do, he suddenly thought, was share something first, share something in return. He couldn't expect her to open up if he didn't open up too.

It wasn't the same. He didn't, couldn't, know exactly how Kate was feeling. But he did know how it hurt to be betrayed by someone he'd loved, or believed he loved. He inwardly flinched. Even now, years afterwards, the memory of that day was one he almost never revisited. He had learned, eventually, to shrug off the actual event, to make light of it, using humor to deflect as he usually did, but it didn't make the memory of the actual day sting much less.

"Did I ever tell you that I walked in on Meredith cheating on me?" he asked and then winced. His voice had automatically tried to slip into the humorous tone he usually adopted when referring to things that had hurt him except, for once, his humor had failed and he'd only sounded preternaturally blunt, even callous.

He felt Kate stiffen and lift her head but he avoided her gaze, focused instead on the print of Linus on the opposite wall.

He swallowed and forced himself to go on, suddenly understanding all over again just how hard it was for Kate to open up because, damn it, this _hurt_ , remembering his own vulnerability and betrayal and anger and disillusionment. He tightened his arm around Kate, let himself savor the closeness of her, the warmth of her, for a minute. He wasn't that man anymore and he had Kate now. Kate, who was loyal and trustworthy and reliable.

"I had a meeting at Black Pawn that day, negotiating my contract for my next two books. Wrangling over contracts always takes forever but for once, Black Pawn was pleased with me because my last book, _Kissed and Killed_ , had been Number 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list for 6 weeks so they were more inclined to be agreeable and my lawyer and Black Pawn's actually managed to come to terms in a matter of hours. I was in a good mood because of that so I stopped and bought red roses for Meredith and came home." He stopped abruptly and then added, rather irrelevantly, "Meredith loved red roses so that was what I always got her. I don't like roses anymore."

"I don't like red roses either," Kate said quietly.

Somehow, that little piece of information, one he hadn't known, made him feel a little better, distracted him—this reminder if he'd needed it that Kate was nothing like Meredith—and he turned his head to kiss her forehead. "Good to know."

He tried to collect his thoughts to talk about this day he had never actually talked about with anyone, a day he had done his level best to forget.

"One of the first homicide cases I worked, back when I was still a uniform, was at a florist, a robbery," she volunteered, filling in the silence, and for a moment his throat felt tight with emotion because he knew she was trying to distract him, comfort him with another little piece of her past. "The florist had been arranging a bouquet of red roses when she was held up and shot for the contents of the cash register and she fell on top of the roses. I remember the way her blood blended in with the color of the rose petals." She paused and then went on, a little more easily, "And then I read a book where the victim's body was covered in red rose petals and after that, I couldn't really like red roses."

That effectively distracted him. " _Flowers for Your Grave_ , that's partly why you don't like red roses?"

"Yes, partly. I read it after the florist case and the whole thing with the red roses reminded me of it."

"I didn't know," he said rather lamely, amazed all over again at just one more proof that Kate had been reading his books for years, another little connection between them forged before he'd even known who she was. It was enough to make him believe in fate, even more than he already had.

Kate was the woman he was fated to be with, he thought, and somehow, irrationally, that made it easier for him to talk about what had happened that day with Meredith. As much as it had hurt at the time, how could he regret it knowing that, somehow, it had led him here, to being with Kate? "Alexis was with my mother for the day because Meredith had said she needed to concentrate on learning her lines for the play she was in. I didn't see her when I walked in so I went looking for her. I found her in our bed with her director." He stopped. Describing the scene that had happened was beyond him; he tried not to think about it, ever. He didn't want to talk about how he'd felt on realizing that he wasn't enough, that he'd been the world's biggest idiot to believe that family life, a life with him and Alexis, could ever be enough for Meredith. And he didn't want to admit that he'd slept in the guest bedroom or in a chair in Alexis's room until he had been able completely replace the entire bedroom set, mattress and all.

"Oh, Castle…" Kate murmured.

"What really got to me was that she didn't seem to understand why I was so upset. I realized years later that it wasn't an act; she really didn't get it. It's not that she's stupid or that she's intentionally malicious. It's just that Meredith is supremely self-centered and since it was just some fun for her and she doesn't care about things like fidelity herself, she's incapable of realizing that someone might think differently about things than she does. It's how I learned to forgive her." He paused and then finally said, "It's not the same but I… I understand the way it hurts when someone you care about betrays you and you wonder if maybe you never really knew them after all."

She let out a sound that might have been a choked sob. "It does hurt," she agreed, her voice trembling almost imperceptibly.

"I'm so sorry, Kate," he murmured rather lamely. God, he hated it when she was upset, hated to hear the slight tremble in her voice. He hated how little he could say or do to try to comfort her. He had liked Royce—and goodness knows he was inclined to think well of anyone who would tell him stories about Kate to say nothing of anyone who made Kate smile and laugh—but at that moment, Castle thought he could happily shoot the man for hurting Kate the way he had.

She sniffed a few times and then turned her face into his shoulder and he felt a small patch of wetness form on his shirt and his heart twisted at the knowledge of her tears. She sniffed again, turning her head and lifting a hand to swipe at the dampness on her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Castle. I'm getting your shirt wet," she mumbled a little soggily.

"It's okay to cry, Kate. You loved him and he hurt you," he murmured, ignoring the small twist of his gut at acknowledging Kate's love for Royce—former love for Royce—aloud.

"I thought I did but it wasn't—it's not the same as it is with you. I thought I loved him but it wasn't the way I love you now," Kate blurted out—and realized rather belatedly that it was true.

She had thought she was in love with Royce—but she understood, now, that whatever she'd felt for Royce hadn't been… real. Not the way it was with Castle.

Royce had been a hero to her. She had put him up on a pedestal, hung on every word he said, believed he was, if not actually infallible, as close to perfect as any person could be. She hadn't allowed him to have any flaws.

She had loved the Royce she thought was perfect.

And at the time, Kate could acknowledge now, she had probably needed that. She had been drowning and Royce had been solid ground, a life raft when she had needed one. She had barely known who Montgomery was, had not met Lanie or Esposito or Ryan yet. Her dad had been unable to help himself, let alone help her. In all that, she had latched on to Royce, the person who had taught her how to be a cop, who had seemed to know everything there was to know about being a cop.

But it was hard to really love a saint or a god, just as it was hard for a crush on some famous movie star to be real. Without the gritty imperfection of reality, feelings would be a foggy simulation of love, a frail thing that would never survive the mundane realities of an actual relationship, just as the mirage of an oasis disappeared when a parched man got too close.

What she felt for Castle was different; it was _real_. She knew Castle's flaws—the way he tried too hard to be popular, his impulsiveness, his vanity, his tendency to use humor to deflect and avoid anything he didn't want to talk about, his streak of immaturity. She knew Castle wasn't perfect—and she loved him, not in spite of his flaws, but even because of his flaws. This dear, irritating, kind, loyal man.

"Kate…" Castle breathed.

She lifted her head to meet his eyes and managed a faint, real smile. "Rick," she said quietly. Just his first name but what she meant was, _I love you_. And she thought, seeing the way his eyes softened, he understood.

He bent and brushed his lips across hers, a brief, tender caress of a kiss, and afterwards she settled her head against his shoulder again.

"Royce was… a hero to me," Kate said softly after a while. "He was just so… cool." She choked on a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. "He was larger than life, the person who taught me how to be a cop. I just… I wanted to be like him. My—my mom, who'd always been my hero, was dead and my dad was… not himself and I was so… lost and Royce—he was a person I could look up to, showed me how to be a cop, how to think like a cop. I suppose… it was inevitable that I fell for him," she managed, trying to sound detached, analytical.

"Did you two—" Castle started and then broke off so abruptly that Kate guessed what he'd almost blurted out before he amended, "Never mind. You don't have to tell me."

She didn't need to tell him and normally, she wouldn't, but this was Castle and something about his correcting himself and acknowledging that he didn't have a right to know made it easier for her to tell. "No," she answered but then went on with a candor that surprised her, "He never let anything happen. I—I would have and he knew it but he was my training officer and if anything had happened, we would both have been fired and my career would have been over before it had even started."

He was silent for a long minute and then he finally said, "You didn't have to tell me."

"I know."

Another silence settled over them before Kate went on, quietly, "I didn't know that he put in for a transfer until I showed up at work one day and found him shaking everyone's hand. He told me right there in front of everyone that I had passed training and no longer needed an official training officer. He… he wished me luck and said 'I know you'll do great, kid,' and then he was gone, just like that. I—I only saw him once, after that, until now. I ran into him at a cop bar about a year after his transfer and that was when I found out that he'd retired from the force but that was it."

"I'm sorry," was all he said, repeating the rather trite words, but somehow, it was enough. Enough to know that he was there, that he understood.

Kate closed her eyes against his shoulder, feeling another stab of grief and loss and betrayal. Royce had used her, had taken advantage of her trust, her happiness at seeing him, and had done it for money.

She suddenly found herself remembering what Castle had said after the Bobby Mann case, about how rare and precious disinterested friendship was. Real friendship, affection, that wasn't bought and couldn't be purchased. And that when a person was lucky enough to have made real, disinterested friends, they should hold on to them.

Royce might have cared about her—she knew he did, in his way—but in the end, he had cared more about money than he did for her.

She could only be thankful, painfully, poignantly, that Royce's betrayal had happened now. If it had happened before, when Royce had been probably the only person she really trusted in her life since her father had been too lost in his own struggles to be relied on, she would have been crushed, shattered.

But things were different now. Royce's betrayal hurt but it wouldn't devastate her.

She suddenly remembered what she'd said to Royce on the phone, that he had been the only person who understood her drive to find her mother's killer. He had been. But she realized now that he had also not warned her against losing herself to her obsession.

She remembered, too, what Castle had said to her when she had been so angry at him for looking into her mother's case. _It's because you're afraid, isn't it? You're afraid that if you look into your mother's death that you'll go back down that rabbit hole and lose yourself again._

He had been right. She had almost hated him for it because no one— _no one_ —told Detective Kate Beckett that she was afraid of anything but she wondered now if maybe that had been the moment when she'd realized that Castle, somehow, knew her well enough and was strong enough to tell her truths she didn't want to hear. She hadn't liked him for it at the time—one never really does like a person who tells unpleasant truths at the moment of the telling—but she could recognize now that it was part of what made Castle good for her.

It was something she didn't really have—or hadn't had until Castle—someone who could and would stand up to her and challenge her and tell her truths she didn't want to hear. Her dad could and did advise her and he knew her better than anyone else but he didn't really challenge her. She knew, although her dad had never said, that he felt that he had lost the right to challenge her for all the years when he had failed to be any help and had only been a burden to her. Esposito occasionally called her out but it was very rare and she could intimidate him into silence, to say nothing of the tinge of awkwardness because of the fact that she was, in some ways, his superior, the leader of their team. Lanie was immune to Beckett intimidation but Lanie was, first and foremost, Kate's best friend and whatever happened, Lanie was on Kate's side and so was not going to be someone to call Kate to the carpet for making a mistake. Captain Montgomery was her boss and her mentor but his authority only extended as far as work.

It seemed odd to think that Castle was strong enough to challenge her, but she knew he was. His strength was almost never overt; he wasn't outwardly authoritative but she knew perfectly well that for all Castle's joking and his childish antics and general agreeableness, he was also mostly immune to Beckett intimidation. (If he hadn't been, he might actually do what she told him to, once in a while.) He didn't order her around but he wheedled and teased and generally pestered her until she found herself giving in—it was how he had persuaded her to eat real breakfasts while staying at the loft, it was how he made her take breaks to eat actual meals while working (Espo and Ryan had long ago given up on making her stop for lunch on one of their busy days when she was single-mindedly focused on a case). She'd seen flashes of it when he insisted that she stay at the loft after her apartment had exploded—his flat contradiction of her statement when he'd said, "You can. And you will."—and in all the times while she'd been staying at the loft when he'd steadfastly refused to let her help much at all in preparing dinner, no matter how she'd threatened.

Things were different now. Her feelings for Royce weren't the same. She wasn't the same person she had been back then. She was better now. She was stronger now.

She wasn't alone anymore. She had Castle now.

And she knew what she needed to do.

* * *

Castle turned to Beckett the moment they were inside her apartment. "Beckett, now will you tell me why you asked me to come home with you?" He managed a small smile. "You're beginning to scare me." It wasn't entirely a joke. He was a little nervous because Beckett's manner when she'd asked him to come back to her place with her after work had been odd, a strange intensity in her expression as if the question was incredibly significant. He didn't get it.

He and Beckett didn't spend every evening together; Alexis's presence meant that he still tried to be home at the loft most evenings and while Beckett joined him some of the time, she didn't always. But even so, he saw Beckett basically every day since she spent her off-days with him now, aside from the occasional plans with her dad or Lanie. And while most of the evenings they spent together were at the loft, they did spend evenings at her apartment when he knew beforehand that Alexis would be out. Kate had, predictably, been right that it would be nice to have a place to go to where they could be alone, without fear of being interrupted by his mother or Alexis. He was becoming increasingly fond of her apartment for that very reason. As much as he adored his daughter and loved his mother, he had to admit that he also wanted to be alone with Kate a lot more often than he was.

"I want to show you something, Castle."

"Of course," he agreed easily enough, masking his flicker of unease. It wasn't like Beckett to be so dramatic; he was far more likely to make a big production out of showing her something than she was.

At least, he told himself reassuringly, it wasn't going to be anything negative about their relationship. They were fine, great even. They'd been brought even closer as a result of Royce's betrayal. He still hated that Kate had been betrayed by yet another person she had trusted and cared about but he couldn't deny that it had strengthened their relationship. He kept the memory of Kate telling him about Royce last night close to his heart, treasured it for what it meant about how much she trusted him, how much her wall had come down.

He followed her into her office and watched as she deliberately opened up the shutters which, until that moment, he had only seen closed. And then felt his heart plummet into his stomach, his gut twisting, as he recognized the crime scene photo from Johanna Beckett's murder.

Oh god.

His eyes took in the rest of the board, the three other names, the index cards laying out the information on their deaths. The one stark question demanding "Why?"—that unanswered question that still loomed over Kate's entire life. He remembered what she'd said, that it helps to know _why_. He, of all people, understood that, the need to find out the complete story, to know the reason behind the action.

"When did you start this?" he asked quietly.

Her eyes flickered up to meet his for a moment. "This summer, while you were on your book tour."

He tried not to feel a twist of hurt as he realized that she had had this board up for two months and never mentioned it. He hadn't even known that she was looking into her mother's murder again, although he wasn't really surprised. He still remembered her vowing, after she'd killed Dick Coonan, that "someday soon" she would find out who had hired Coonan to kill her mom, and he would never forget the way she'd told him that she wanted him around when she did.

She'd been looking into her mother's case for two months without telling him—he shouldn't feel hurt over this, he told himself again. He shouldn't. He knew what her mom's case meant to her; it was the defining event of her life, the deepest, unhealed wound that still bled. And she guarded the privacy of this biggest chink in her armor fiercely.

But she had told Royce about her mom's case, had confided in Royce about her driving need to find her mother's killer. He remembered what she'd said to Royce over the phone, that he had been the only one who understood her obsession.

And now she was showing this murder board to him. Deliberately, willingly, letting him into this most important part of her life.

He had looked into her mom's case once without her permission and after that, he had sworn that he wouldn't invade this most private part of her past again. But now, she was letting him see, opening up to him.

She slipped her hand into his and he glanced at her, his heart flipping in spite of the solemnity of the moment at the simple gesture of affection, reacting as it always did, even now, to the simplest touch from Kate.

She met his eyes. "Will you help me with my mom's case?"

The question, the look in her eyes, meant everything. This, he thought rather fuzzily, was everything he had ever wanted or needed to know. She might have loved Royce once but she was in love with Castle _now_. Kate Beckett loved him and she trusted him. With all the depth and strength of her vulnerable, well-protected heart.

"Yes."

It was all he needed to say.

 _~To be continued…~_

A/N 2: Thank you, everyone, for reading.


	4. Chapter 3: Punked

Author's Note: After the relative seriousness of the last chapter, a fun one this time, revolving around 3x4 "Punked." As usual, there's some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 3_

"Hey, Alexis, you ready?" Kate greeted.

Alexis looked up with a smile. "Hi, Kate. Hi, Dad. And yes, I'm ready."

Alexis brushed a quick kiss to Castle's cheek before heading to the front hall closet to grab a jacket.

"Can I come?" Castle asked.

Kate rolled her eyes. "Castle, I've told you at least ten times now that Alexis wanted to have a girls night out so the answer hasn't changed. No, you may not come with us." He'd been pestering her since Alexis had sent her a text message this morning asking if she and Kate could go out for dinner to talk about something. After his first couple attempts at persuading her had failed, he had switched to asking if he could come at random moments, as if he expected to surprise her into agreeing.

He pouted. "But I want to come."

Alexis laughed. "Oh come on, Dad. It's just dinner. I want to talk to Kate about something."

"Are you two plotting something? Because if you are, I definitely should come with you."

Kate smirked at him. "Oh really? And why is that?"

He pasted on a saintly expression. "It's for the greater good. I have no doubt that if you two set your minds to it, you could take over the world in about three days. It wouldn't be fair not to let me warn the world."

Alexis and Kate both laughed. "I promise I'll tell you before I make any plans for world domination, Dad," Alexis said with mock solemnity and he heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief.

"Oh, fine, if you promise. I suppose you can go and leave me here, all alone." Castle's tone would have done justice to a martyr.

Kate grinned as Alexis gave Castle a deliberately condescending pat on the back. "I'm sure you'll be fine."

Castle huffed. "And now you're mocking me. That's not a nice thing to do to your own father."

Alexis only laughed as she and Kate left the loft with a final wave. "Bye, Dad."

"See you later, Castle."

"Have fun, you two."

And Kate heard in his voice how happy he was over her and Alexis's relationship. For all Castle's pouting over being left out, she knew he loved it that she and Alexis were close.

Alexis chatted lightly and easily about her classes on the way to the restaurant, a little Italian place in Hell's Kitchen, which Kate had been to a couple times with both Castles, as it was a place Castle had been taking Alexis to for years.

Once they got to the restaurant and were seated, Alexis's stream of conversation about her classes petered out as she hesitated.

Kate pretended not to notice but asked mildly, "How is The Boy doing?" She guessed that was why Alexis had asked to meet up, to talk about The Boy, as Kate had taken to referring to him, since in all of Alexis's conversations about this boy since her return from camp, she had only referred to The Boy as "he," as if this boy were suddenly the only male creature in existence. Kate had suppressed a smile at this single-minded focus on this boy and she was expecting there to have been developments on that front. She and Alexis had only had a chance to talk a few times since she had listened to Alexis fret over why The Boy hadn't called immediately after he and his family had returned from Europe but since The Boy had called (and he and Alexis had then proceeded to spend the next several hours on the phone, as Castle had grumpily informed Kate), Kate had only guessed at Alexis's progressing relationship from Alexis's sudden reticence on the subject.

Alexis blushed, confirming Kate's guess. "Ashley," Alexis said, pronouncing the name with an odd mixture of reverence and incredulity.

"Ashley, is it?" Kate asked teasingly.

Alexis nodded, ducking her head a little. "He's great." She stopped, hesitated, her fingers picking apart a piece of bread until it was reduced to crumbs, before she looked up at Kate and blurted out, "I really like him, Kate, and I wanted to know… can I ask you something?"

"Of course. You can ask me anything."

"How do you know when you're in love? How did you know that you're in love with Dad—I mean, if you are. I don't—I mean—maybe you're not," Alexis stammered, suddenly unable to meet Kate's eyes as she blushed painfully.

Kate felt herself flushing in spite of herself. "I am," she admitted. Oh damn. Oh god. It was hard enough just to say those words to Castle—she had only said the words to Castle a few times, even now—and never to anyone else. And now, she'd just admitted it to his daughter.

Alexis's expression lit up. "Oh, I'm so glad, Kate, because I know Dad loves you."

Kate blushed hotter and it was her turn to duck her head because, really, how was she supposed to respond to that? She knew Castle loved her but it was different hearing it from his _daughter_.

"And he deserves to be loved," Alexis went on, her voice softening.

Kate forced herself to meet Alexis's eyes. "I know he does and I do… love him," she managed to say, even though her heart seemed to have taken up residence in her throat, nerves rioting in her stomach. She was getting better—she _was_ —at taking down her wall, letting Castle in, but talking about her feelings openly was still a challenge and even now, it was only ever really with Castle that Kate found herself able to talk more freely. But Alexis was the most important person in Castle's life and if anyone had a right to know about Kate's feelings for Castle, it was Alexis.

Alexis smiled. "So how do you know that it's love?"

Kate opened her mouth, although she wasn't really sure what she was going to say, but then Alexis rushed on before she could. "I mean, I know it's an emotion, a feeling, and you can't exactly define how you know when you're feeling it, but since I've never felt it before, how do I know that what I'm feeling is even it at all?"

Alexis finally stopped for a breath and Kate answered with something she'd heard before and thought it was as good an answer as any for the eternal question, "You know you're in love when all the songs make sense."

Alexis's face lit up. "Oh, that's so true, Kate! I've been listening to all this music and reading all this poetry and it's all suddenly making sense to me in this way that it never did before."

Kate couldn't quite help but smile, her heart becoming soft with tenderness as she watched Alexis, flushed with happiness, her eyes shining as brightly as if she'd been illuminated from within. Alexis was so young still, in spite of all her maturity, so young and so innocent. And while Kate knew only too well that it was inevitable that Alexis wouldn't be able to stay so innocent, that her heart would end up broken sometime (probably even by this Ashley), she could only hope that Alexis would not be hurt too badly, would still be able to preserve the belief in love and magic the way Castle had.

"Have you asked your dad about this?" she asked, although she suspected even as she finished the question that the answer was no. Castle would have mentioned it to her, she thought.

Alexis sobered, the glow in her face dimming a little. "No, not yet. That's actually the other reason I wanted to talk to you, Kate. I'm going to ask Ashley to come over sometime soon so Dad can meet him and I'll tell Dad then but I know Dad will probably overreact, the way he does. I thought I'd tell you first and, Kate, could you try to keep Dad from freaking out too much after he finds out?"

Kate gave a wry smile. "I'll do what I can, Alexis, but you know, I think keeping your Dad from getting upset when it comes to you and any boy might be a superhuman task."

Alexis laughed a little, making a small face of acknowledgement. "You might be right but will you try? Ash is so sweet and I think Dad would like him if he'd only get to know him a little."

Kate smiled and on an impulse of tenderness, brushed a strand of hair away from Alexis's face. "You're just growing up too fast for your dad, you know, Alexis. He always says that the days when you were little and you two did everything together were the best days of his life."

Alexis made a face. "I know that and that's sweet of him but really, Kate, I'm 16 now and in high school. Did he expect me to stay five forever?"

"No, he didn't, but I don't think he realized just how fast you would grow up either. My dad still says the same thing to me, Alexis, so I don't think any parent is ever prepared for how fast their kids will grow up."

Alexis grinned, mischief suddenly glinting in her eyes. "You know, if you and Dad give me any little brothers or sisters, you could find out for yourself."

Kate choked on air. "Alexis! That's not—we're not—your dad and I aren't—that is not happening any time soon!" she finally managed to splutter out a complete sentence.

Alexis laughed. "Oh, I know, Kate, I just wanted to see your face when I said it."

Kate narrowed her eyes at the girl. "You are definitely your father's daughter," she declared. "And right now, I'm not sure that's a compliment."

Alexis only smirked and Kate quickly changed the subject, saying, "I want to know more about Ashley."

Thankfully, the distraction worked and Alexis happily switched to enthusing over Ashley's many perfections, allowing Kate to relax, even as she made a mental note not to mention what Alexis had said to Castle. That was so far beyond where she and Castle were right now that it might as well be in outer space.

Kids! Nope, not thinking about it. She shoved the very idea of it into the back corner of her mind, slamming and locking a figurative door on the subject. Not thinking about it at all.

* * *

As Kate expected, Castle metaphorically pounced on her the moment she got back to the loft and Alexis had gone upstairs after giving Kate a quick hug and a smile.

"Well," Castle demanded the moment Alexis was out of sight, "what did Alexis want to talk to you about?"

"She wants to tell you herself when she's ready so I promised that I wouldn't say anything."

He gave her one of his pleading puppy-dog looks. "Please? I'll still act surprised if you tell me, I promise!"

She had to laugh. "You want me to break a promise I made to your daughter?"

"Well, no," he admitted, "but at least tell me if it was bad. You would tell me if it was something serious that I needed to know, right, Beckett? She's not doing drugs or dropping out of school or—or pregnant, right?"

She stared. "Really, Castle, that's what you're worried about? This is Alexis we're talking about, remember? Alexis, who is the most responsible teenager I've ever met, who is more mature than you are half the time."

He smirked, suddenly distracted. "Only half the time?"

She rolled her eyes a little. "I take it back," she said dryly. "More than half the time."

"So you're telling me it's nothing bad?" he repeated, returning to the topic of Alexis in one of those lightning-quick changes that she was becoming accustomed to with his butterfly brain.

"It's nothing bad," she promised. Well, nothing bad in the usual run of things. She was relatively sure that Castle would not think it a good thing that Alexis had her first serious boyfriend but she would worry about that after Castle found out about it.

He pouted, not entirely satisfied, and Kate kissed him, distracting him until she was quite sure that his worries over Alexis were entirely forgotten, at least temporarily.

* * *

The call about a body in the park came early two days later.

Kate accepted the cup of coffee Castle handed to her with a quick smile of thanks that faded as she realized that he wasn't smiling.

"What is it, Castle?"

"Alexis is in love," he responded gloomily.

"So she told you?" Kate commented.

"No, Mother told me," he answered automatically and then stopped walking, turning to stare at her. "Wait, you knew too?" he asked in an ' _et tu, Brute_ ' tone.

"That was what Alexis wanted to talk to me about the other day," she told him.

"So she told you and my mother that she was in love but she hasn't told me anything about it," he summarized glumly. "But I'm the cool dad! I'm her go-to guy! She used to tell me everything!"

"Calm down, Castle, it's only a boyfriend," Kate said mildly, reflecting that Alexis had definitely been right to try to enlist Kate to keep Castle from freaking out. She had probably told Martha, knowing that Martha would mention it to Castle, in the hope that Castle would have gotten over the worst of his upset by the time school was over. But then again, Alexis did have something like an advanced degree in Castle-management.

"It is not just a boyfriend, although a boyfriend is bad enough. This is the end of an era. I can see it now," Castle declared melodramatically. "She's growing up; she talks to you or my mother about things before she talks to me. But I used to be the one she talked to about everything and I'm the one who's been there for the big and small events of her life. When she took her first steps, I was there to catch her when she fell. The first time she rode her bike without training wheels, I was the maniac chasing her down the street screaming for her to watch out for the old lady with the walker. And when she said her first word—"

"I know, Castle," she interrupted his flood of increasingly overwrought words calmly, "you cried like a baby and called Martha up to babble about it. But seriously, Castle, you're over-reacting. Alexis adores you and you know it and that's not going to change just because she has a boyfriend now."

"But things are already changing! A year ago, Alexis would never have mentioned something as important as being in love to anyone else before she'd told me! I'm afraid that this is the beginning of the end of our special thing."

"You are really over-reacting, Castle. I've seen the way Alexis looks at you and the way she talks about you. She loves you and a boyfriend isn't going to come between you and Alexis."

"I should have put her in a convent," he grumbled. "I like convents. Nice high walls and no teenage boys allowed."

She laughed. "You're not Catholic. And don't be ridiculous, Castle."

"I am being perfectly reasonable," he huffed. "Teenage boys can't be trusted—and I say this as someone who used to be one."

"You always say you trust Alexis's judgment and from what Alexis has told me, he sounds like a perfectly nice boy."

"He's a teenage boy," he said darkly, in much the same tone as someone would say, he's an axe murderer.

"Give him a chance, Castle. For Alexis's sake, if nothing else, because she really likes him."

He sighed. "She must really like him but I just… I don't think I'm ready for her to be in love or have a serious boyfriend."

She smiled slightly. "I don't think any father is ever ready for his little girl to start dating. You should have seen the way my dad reacted to the first boy I brought home."

"Luckily for your dad, your taste in guys has gotten much better," Castle smirked. "Your dad likes me."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm beginning to question my taste in men and my dad's good judgment right about now," she said dryly, ducking under the crime scene tape as Castle lifted it. "Now focus, Castle, we've got a murder to solve. Dr. Parish, do we have an ID?"

Kate blinked as the body came into view, with Lanie kneeling by its side. It was a young man, clearly shot dead, a large caliber bullet hole in his chest, and he was…

"He's naked," Castle commented.

"None of your perverted theories, Castle," Lanie interjected. "I found fibers in the bullet hole."

"He was wearing clothes when he was shot," Kate and Castle said in near-perfect unison.

Kate caught Lanie's smirk and tried not to blush. "So the killer took his clothes," she went on, adopting a brisk, no-nonsense tone. A killer taking the victim's clothing—that was unusual.

And, she couldn't help but think fleetingly, this should serve to distract Castle nicely from his fretting over Alexis.

* * *

Kate smiled as she answered her phone later that evening. "Hey, Alexis."

"Kate!" Alexis's voice rang out over the line. "You were supposed to make sure Dad didn't freak out too much! What did you say to him? He just came home with a _gun_ , and now Ash is totally scared of Dad and probably thinks he's some kind of psycho and I don't know what to tell Ash now and I really really wanted this first meeting between Dad and Ash to go well but it's all ruined and, Kate, I thought you were going to try to keep Dad calm!"

Alexis finally paused to take a breath and Kate managed to get a word in. "Slow down, Alexis, what happened?"

"Why did Dad come home waving a gun around?"

"Your Dad was waving a gun?"

"Ash had come over and we were… kissing," Alexis admitted, her voice lowering, and Kate smiled. She could practically _hear_ Alexis's blush. "And then Dad burst inside waving a gun around and yelling something about besmirching his honor or something like a total crazy person. Kate!" Alexis almost wailed. "Ash was so freaked out he left right away and he would barely even look at me."

Kate bit her lip, hard, clamping her lips together but her laughter escaped in spite of her efforts, starting with a snicker until she was laughing unrestrainedly. Oh god. She could picture it so easily. Alexis and some teenage boy making out on the couch, only to be interrupted by Castle bursting in, waving one of the old-fashioned guns involved in the case. He had probably just tried to make some dramatic entrance in typical Castle fashion—and she was relatively sure he hadn't known that Ashley was coming over because he hadn't mentioned it to her—and oh, poor Ashley. Poor Alexis! She'd never heard Alexis sound so upset; the girl was usually so mature, the calm reasonable one among the family.

"Kate, it's not funny!"

Kate choked a little as she tried to swallow her laughter, coughed, and managed to get her laughter under control. "Sorry, Alexis," she forced out, attempting to sound entirely sober.

"Did Dad really need a gun for this case?" Alexis demanded.

Kate cleared her throat. "Well, actually, it turns out that old-fashioned guns are involved and your Dad was doing research on them so yes, there was a reason your Dad came home with a gun."

Alexis huffed. "Fine so he was telling the truth."

"Now, Alexis, that's not fair," Kate scolded, although she kept her voice mild, "your Dad doesn't lie to you. He didn't know Ashley was coming over, did he?"

Alexis was silent and then admitted, "He didn't know that Ashley's my boyfriend; I just mentioned the name and so Dad assumed that Ashley was a girl."

Ah, so that was what had happened.

"Did you talk to Dad about Ash? What did he say?"

"Your Dad will come around, Alexis," Kate answered confidently. She was sure of that. Castle wouldn't be thrilled about the idea of Alexis having a boyfriend but she also knew him well enough to know that he was the last parent to forbid Alexis from seeing Ashley or some other draconian measures. "I think the main thing is that he felt a little hurt that you had mentioned Ashley to me and to your grandmother before you told him about your having a boyfriend."

"You know how Dad gets when I talk about boys!" Alexis protested rather defensively.

Alexis did have a point. Castle tended to make ridiculous, distracting faces or pretend to plug his ears and warble "lalalalala, I don't want to hear this" or something like that when Alexis mentioned boys in anything other than a strictly platonic light.

"I know but your Dad just misses the time when you told him about everything. He loves being your go-to guy."

"I know Dad will always be here for me. I still need him around," Alexis said, her voice softening.

"I know you do, Alexis. Just give your Dad a couple days to get used to the idea of his not being the only man in your life, so to speak, okay? He'll get there."

"Okay, thanks, Kate." Alexis paused. "I'm going to call Ash now and explain that Dad's not a crazy person."

"Oh, I don't know if I'd say that," Kate quipped. "Your Dad's pretty weird a lot of the time."

Alexis laughed. "Yeah but Ash doesn't need to know that now."

"Maybe not," Kate acknowledged. "Have a good night, Alexis."

"You too, Kate. And thanks for listening."

"Anytime, Alexis." Kate ended the phone call and smiled to herself, laughing all over again as she imagined the scene of Castle bursting in on Alexis and Ashley. Poor Ashley had probably been traumatized. Although, she supposed, putting a healthy fear of Alexis's dad into him was probably not an entirely bad thing since Ashley was, after all, still a teenage boy.

She was still laughing as she pressed the button to call Castle, wanting to hear his version of the story, which she had no doubt he would tell with all his trademark flair for storytelling and humor.

* * *

Kate smiled as Castle made a show of shutting his eyes before he peered cautiously around the door of the loft. "Just you?"

Alexis looked up and grinned. "Yes," she confirmed. "Hi Dad. Hi, Kate."

Kate smiled as she sat down next to Alexis on the couch. "Hey, Alexis."

"Thanks for talking to me about Ashley, Dad," Alexis smiled. "I feel so much better."

"You can always talk to me," Castle said as he settled on the other side of Alexis. "Or at me," he amended.

"Yeah," Alexis sighed a little. "Being in love is exhausting."

Kate and Castle's eyes met briefly in mutual amusement at this rather dramatic statement before Castle's lips quirked slightly as he looked at Alexis. "Yeah, it can be," he agreed.

"Does it get any easier?"

"Yeah, it does," he assured her.

Kate smiled to herself. She wouldn't say that being in love really got easier; it was always complicated, always challenging. But in another sense, it did get easier once one was no longer a teenager, no longer so prone to thinking that everything was the end of the world. Oh, the vicissitudes of first love… She suddenly remembered the way she'd come home in floods of tears after experiencing her first heartbreak, the way she'd sobbed into her pillow and wailed to her mom that she never wanted to like a boy again.

Alexis gave a sigh of relief. "Good. And Dad? I want to go on a date tonight."

Castle rather obviously manufactured a smile and put it on. "Of course. Great. Have a good time," he said with forced casualness. Kate inwardly winced in spite of her amusement. He really wasn't very good at hiding his feelings.

"I meant with you, Dad," Alexis clarified and Castle's expression blanked with sheer surprise, his lips parting slightly as he stared at Alexis. "You'll always be my go-to guy," she told him softly.

Kate smiled at the words. Castle's gaze bounced between Kate and Alexis before he asked, "Did you put her up to this?"

Kate lifted her hands in a gesture of innocence. "Alexis can think for herself, Castle. All I've done is be a sounding board for her." Well, that and try to act as a sort of translator of sorts between them. As much as Castle had over-reacted (characteristically) to Alexis and Ashley's relationship, she knew that there was a kernel of real hurt because Alexis had mentioned being in love to both Kate and Martha before Castle had found out. He and Alexis had always been so close and any little sign that Alexis might be growing apart from him as she grew up hurt him. And Kate found that she couldn't stand the idea of Castle being hurt.

She wasn't surprised that Alexis had come up with this plan to reassure Castle. Alexis was clever enough, loved Castle enough, to know what he would need.

Castle narrowed his eyes a little before he turned to Alexis. "A pity date. I'll take it."

Alexis threw her arms around her dad and hugged him.

Castle released Alexis and then turned to Kate, his smile dropping from his face. "Oh, wait, Beckett, you should—"

"No, Castle," she interrupted him before he could finish his invitation. "You and Alexis go have some father-daughter time."

Alexis turned to her. "Oh, no, Kate, you can come too. I didn't mean…"

Kate smiled and shook her head. "It's okay, Alexis, really. You and your dad should have time together. I am perfectly capable of looking out for myself for a few hours, you know."

Alexis smiled and it was Kate's turn to be hugged by the girl. "Thank you, Kate," Alexis whispered softly.

Kate returned Alexis's hug, her eyes going to Castle to see the love and the happiness suffusing his expression, his eyes.

Alexis leaped up. "Let me just grab my phone and then we can go, Dad."

Castle reached out and grabbed Kate's hand, tugging her across the couch and she went willingly, half-falling against him as he wrapped his arm around her. "You sure you don't want to come, Kate?"

Kate smiled and pushed herself up so she could face him. "I'm sure. Father-daughter time is important and I know you've missed having Alexis all to yourself."

"You're pretty great, you know that?" he asked softly.

She felt herself flush, ducking her head as one hand lifted automatically to fiddle with her hair. It was so… well, girlish, to react like this to a compliment but she really couldn't help it sometimes when he looked at her the way he was now. (Damn, what this man could do to her.) "Well, Alexis means a lot to me," she murmured.

"Only Alexis?"

She looked up at him to see his teasing smirk. "Her dad's not so bad," she quipped.

He clutched his chest and fell backwards dramatically. "Crushed again," he declaimed tragically.

Kate smirked and they both looked up at the sound of Alexis's laughter.

"Silly Dad."

Castle stood up. "You ready, sweetie?"

"Mm hmm, let's go. See you later, Kate."

Castle bent and brushed a quick kiss to the top of Kate's head before he moved around the couch and slung his arm around Alexis's shoulders.

"Have a good time."

Castle and Alexis both glanced back. "We will. Later, Beckett."

Kate settled back on the couch as the door closed behind Castle and Alexis and pulled out her phone. She should arrange to have a father-daughter date of her own this weekend.

 _~To be continued…~_

A/N 2: The scene where Castle meets Ashley for the first time is one of the funniest scenes ever so I made sure not to change it.

Next up, "3XK," which I'm sure a lot of you are eagerly awaiting.


	5. Chapter 4: 3XK

Author's Note: Without further ado, the chapter I'm sure a lot of you have been waiting for, dealing with 3x6 "3XK." As usual, there's some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 4_

Kate glanced at the clock on her computer and inwardly frowned. She would have thought that Castle and Ryan would have come back by now from talking to Jerry Tyson.

She was being ridiculous, she told herself firmly. Any more of this and she would turn into one of those clingy girlfriends who freaked out if they didn't hear from their significant other every hour. She was, she thought, with a flicker of amusement breaking through her niggling sense that something wasn't quite right, becoming like Jenny, who as much as Kate liked her, had become rather notorious around the precinct for worrying if she didn't hear from Ryan throughout the day. Admittedly, many cops found that their significant others and spouses became like that, with some justification since they all knew that being a cop, especially being a cop in the City, was a dangerous job.

She knew her dad worried about her more than he would ever tell her outright and she also knew that at least part of the reason Castle was so determined to be her partner was in order to protect her.

Kate had never thought she was the sort of person inclined to worry overly much. She was a cop and cops tended to be fatalistic about the risks of the job; it was the only way to survive, really, because otherwise worrying would render them incapable of doing the job. She was careful, always made sure to stay in top training both physically and with her marksmanship, but for the most part, she accepted the risks that came along with her job and didn't dwell on them overmuch.

Loving Castle had wrecked her vaunted ability to compartmentalize and stay coolly fatalistic about the risks of her job and focusing only on doing the work. She detested the fact that he was in danger because of his loyalty to her, was haunted by the fear that something would happen to him as a result of their partnership and knew that if anything ever did, she would never ever forgive herself. There were times she hated herself for needing him so much, for wanting him beside her at work the way she did, and all she could tell herself was that, even if she tried, she knew he wouldn't agree to leave her. It was hard enough trying to get him to stay behind her and the boys when they went anywhere. But the man who had run into a burning building to save her was not one who would ever agree to leave her alone for good. All she could do was promise herself solemnly—just as she had promised Alexis—to do anything that she could to protect him.

Kate glanced at the clock again and frowned more definitely. Castle and Ryan should certainly be back by now.

She was being silly, she told herself. 3XK had been caught; there was no more threat. And Ryan was a perfectly capable cop. He and Castle could have just decided to stop off somewhere along the way to grab a drink or something. Castle still occasionally joked that Ryan owed him a drink for almost shooting him more than a month ago in Maya Santori's apartment.

She refused to turn into one of those clingy girlfriends who were incapable of going more than a couple hours without hearing from their boyfriends or became so paranoid that she imagined a threat to Castle lurking in every shadow.

She was a calm, rational person. And Castle could take care of himself.

There was nothing to worry about, she told herself again.

Her phone ringing interrupted her thoughts—it must be Castle, she thought—and she answered quickly. "Beckett."

"Oh, Katherine, are you with Richard?"

Kate straightened up, feeling a sharp stab of apprehension at Martha's voice. Martha had never called her before. "Martha, is everything all right?"

"Richard's not with you? Have you heard from him?"

"No, I haven't," Kate answered slowly, fear beginning to congeal in her stomach. "Have you?"

"I just spoke to him."

Kate relaxed a little. If Martha had just spoken to him, then…

"Katherine, he told me he loved me and I know something is wrong. There was just something in his voice. Katherine, you have to believe me, I—"

"I believe you, Martha," Kate interrupted gently, even though her heart was rabbiting around in her chest with burgeoning terror. She did. She knew the way Castle and Martha talked to each other; if Castle had told Martha outright that he loved her, then something was wrong. "I'll find him right now, I promise." She paused. "Is Alexis home?"

"Yes, she is."

"Okay. Try not to panic. I'll find him." She bit back the automatic promise to bring Castle home safely, her heart leaping into her throat as she realized that she couldn't make such a promise. Oh god oh god oh god.

"Thank you, Katherine."

Kate ended the phone call and immediately called Castle.

He picked up after only one ring. "Hello?"

She let out her breath in relief. He was alive, at least. Answering his phone so he must be fine. Right? "Castle, are you okay?"

"Yeah, Beckett, I'm fine."

The words were reassuring—and yet… Kate couldn't shake the sense that something was off and at the moment, she couldn't pinpoint why. Instinct or something. (Castle would tease her about her reliance on the so-called "magic" properties of her gut, she thought irrelevantly.)

"You still with Ryan?"

"Yeah. Ryan and me are gonna stop off at O'Leary's for a drink. Ryan says he wants tequila."

Kate was on her feet before Castle had finished speaking, dread and terror taking up residence in her stomach. Oh god oh god.

She snapped her fingers to get Esposito's attention and pointed at Montgomery's office. He nodded and went to the office immediately.

"Okay. So I'll see you later?" she asked cautiously, a last test.

"Yeah, see you later. And Katherine?"

Katherine. Oh god. Something was definitely very wrong. Kate froze and she had to swallow hard before she could answer. "Yeah?"

"I love you."

She felt as if her lungs were collapsing, suddenly unable to get enough air. "I love you too," she choked out, as if she were being strangled, and tried not to feel as if she were saying goodbye. She wasn't. She couldn't be. (But he thought he was. She could hear it in his voice.)

The call ended and Kate rushed into Montgomery's office. "Sir, we need to send a team to the motel where we set Tyson up. Castle and Ryan are in danger. I think Gates was a copycat and Tyson was the real 3XK."

"How do you know?" Montgomery demanded, pausing just before he picked up his phone.

Kate suppressed the urge to scream. She knew the Captain just needed to be cautious; he couldn't order out a SWAT team based on nothing but her say-so, without any more evidence. "I just talked to Castle. He said—he said that he and Ryan are going out for drinks and Ryan wants tequila," she blurted out in a rush.

And his voice had been odd. He'd been speaking slowly, as if he were considering every word before he said it, which was unlike him. He'd called her Katherine, which he never did. And he had said "Ryan and me," which was a grammatical error that would, under normal circumstances, have horrified Castle to the depths of his writer's soul.

"Ryan doesn't drink tequila," Esposito spoke up, sudden urgency in his voice. "Makes him sick. Castle knows that."

Montgomery nodded and picked up the phone. "You two, go. I'll call in a team to follow you and I'll be right behind."

Kate and Esposito ran out of the precinct.

Kate flicked on the siren of her cruiser with hands that trembled slightly and she clamped her hands to the wheel of the car in a vise-like grip in order to still the trembling. She couldn't breathe properly, sucking in air in shallow gasps, as she proceeded to break every traffic rule and sped with reckless abandon to the motel where Tyson had been kept.

Castle. Oh god, Castle. They wouldn't be too late, couldn't be too late. He was still alive. She tried to tell herself that she would somehow sense it if he—if anything happened to him. That she would sense the way her world would shatter the moment Richard Castle's heart stopped beating. But she couldn't really believe it. She hadn't felt it when her mom had died, hadn't sensed anything at all being wrong.

Castle. She choked back a sob. She couldn't lose him.

Thank God the motel wasn't far. It was just a few minutes before she and Esposito almost screeched to a stop in the parking lot of the motel.

They would be in time—they had to be in time.

Kate flung herself out of her car almost before she'd finished putting it in park, grabbing her gun as she sprinted across the lot and up the stairs, barely conscious of Espo following on her heels.

She kicked open the door. "Castle!" Oh god, if they'd been too late…

And then the beam of her flashlight caught him, wincing in the sudden glare of the light. Emotion—relief, gratitude, love—flooded her, so powerful it was almost a corporeal feeling. She was almost dizzy with it. He was alive.

"It's clear," she only peripherally heard him say. "He's gone. I'm fine. Ryan needs an ambulance."

His words barely registered on her consciousness—he was alive. He was alive, conscious. And that was all she needed to know right then.

"Castle," she almost choked out as she staggered to her knees in front of the chair where he'd been tied, her hands flying up to touch his chest, his shoulders, his face, needing tangible reassurance that he was unhurt. "I'm so glad you're okay," she gasped, the only words she could think of.

She was peripherally aware of hearing Ryan groan something—he was alive, regaining consciousness—and Esposito kneeling at his side but most of her mind, her entire being, was focused on Castle.

"Tyson. He's the Triple Killer. He set Gates up to be a copycat," Castle told her urgently.

"I know," she assured him, her fingers briefly touching his cheeks in a fleeting caress, before she busied herself freeing him from his restraints. "I started to suspect when you and Ryan didn't come back from talking to Tyson. And then Martha called. She said that you told her you loved her and she knew something had to be terribly wrong. And then when I called you… well, I _knew_."

He managed a wan smile. "My clever girls."

She tried to smile but only succeeded in making her lips twitch. "You said 'Ryan and me' and you'd never make that kind of mistake if you weren't under duress."

"I knew you'd get it," he sighed tiredly.

She slid her arms around his neck and leaned in to brush her lips against his. She knew Esposito and Ryan were still in the room but at the moment, she couldn't care less that she would normally never kiss Castle when anyone from the precinct was watching. At that moment, she couldn't have stopped herself from kissing him even if the entire 12th Precinct was there along with all the top brass at One PP.

She shut her eyes as she rested her forehead against his. "I thought I'd lost you," she whispered.

He slid his arms around her waist, holding her. "Never," he promised quietly. "You'll never lose me."

He couldn't promise that. She choked on a sob but she only kissed him again, quickly, before she pushed herself to her feet and then grasped his hand to half-pull him up.

Once Castle was standing, she belatedly (and guiltily) looked over at Ryan, whom Esposito was helping up to his feet while Ryan rather gingerly touched his head.

"Ryan, you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," he half-groaned, only to sway a little when he took a step and Espo had to catch him beneath his shoulders, supporting him.

She kept her grip on Castle's hand—she might never let go of him again, she thought without the slightest sense of hyperbole—as they followed Ryan and Esposito's slow progress.

The SWAT team and an ambulance arrived, sirens blaring, just as she and Castle stepped out of the room. And in another minute, the motel was swarming with cops, the EMT's quickly and immediately taking control of Ryan and insisting on checking Castle over as well, ignoring his protests that he hadn't been hurt at all.

Kate was aware that she was being rather hypocritical—she wasn't exactly known for being a compliant patient herself—but at the moment, she didn't care. She sided with the EMT's and gave Castle her best bossy Detective Beckett look, the one that almost never failed to compel obedience and sure enough, it didn't this time as he gave in with something less than good grace but gave in nonetheless.

She let go of Castle's hand reluctantly when the EMT's insisted on it but hovered just steps away until the EMT's cleared Castle.

"I told you I'm fine," Castle said to the EMT's before he looked at Kate. "How's Ryan?"

Right, Ryan. "I'll go check," she answered and forced herself to step away towards the open back doors of the ambulance where Esposito was standing.

"How is he?" she asked.

"I'm fine," Ryan answered before either Espo or the EMT could. "Just… he got away, Beckett. And if it hadn't been for Castle, I'd never have guessed and I—I let him get the drop on me."

"Don't, Ryan. It happens to the best of us," Kate told him gently but she knew her words weren't going to work. Ryan was a cop. For a cop to be disarmed, his weapon stolen—Ryan would be haunted by it for a long time.

Captain Montgomery joined them, nodding at Beckett and Espo and addressing Ryan, "Glad to see you're okay, Detective."

Ryan straightened up. "Tyson got away, Sir. He got the drop on me and knocked me out with my own weapon."

Montgomery sighed. "Don't beat yourself up, Ryan. The Triple Killer fooled everyone, not just you."

He paused and then glanced at Kate. "Beckett, I told Castle he can give his official statement tomorrow at the precinct. The same goes for you, Ryan. Esposito, make sure Ryan gets home."

Esposito nodded. "Yes, sir."

Kate nodded at Captain Montgomery and exchanged looks with Esposito and Ryan before she stepped away from the ambulance.

She felt a flicker of panic when she momentarily didn't see Castle, her eyes flying wildly around before she found him, sitting on a bench by the pool just on the other side of the parking lot. His elbows were on his knees, his head lowered, and her heart pinched. He looked so… exhausted and worse, he looked dispirited.

She glanced around, hesitated, and then hurried into the lobby of the motel, finding a coffee machine in the corner. That would do. She made a quick cup of coffee and, while the coffee was brewing, pulled out her phone and called Martha.

Martha answered immediately. "Hello?"

"Martha, it's Kate. He's fine," Kate assured her quickly.

She heard Martha's sigh of relief. "Oh, Katherine, thank you. He's not hurt, you're sure?"

"He's fine," she repeated. "Really." She didn't know but she doubted that Castle would want his mother to know about how close he had actually come, the real danger he had been in, so she didn't say anything more. "I'll bring him home in a little while."

"All right. Tell him—well, just bring him home, Katherine."

"Does Alexis know anything?"

"No. No, I… I didn't tell her, didn't want to worry her unless I knew for certain. She's gone to bed."

Kate relaxed a little. She did know for certain that Castle would not want Alexis to have been worried. "Okay. We'll be home soon, Martha."

"Yes, thank you, Katherine."

Kate disconnected the call and prepared a quick cup of coffee for Castle before she hurried back to him.

He was still sitting on the bench by the pool, had not moved except to lift his head so now he was staring bleakly at the pale light glimmering out of the pool.

She sat down beside him, close enough that her thigh was pressed along the length of his, and handed him the coffee. "Here," she murmured.

He took the coffee. "Thanks."

"I called Martha, told her you were okay."

He glanced at her, his expression suddenly looking stricken, and she realized that he hadn't even thought of how Martha would be worrying. "Oh, thanks, Kate."

"Alexis doesn't know anything; she just went to bed."

He released a long breath and she felt the way he relaxed marginally. "Oh, good."

A silence settled over them for a moment and then Kate sighed softly and leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder and she felt him tip his head to rest his cheek against her hair, leaning on her in turn.

"Rick," she said very quietly, "I'm so glad you're okay," she repeated. The words were so lame, so inadequate, to express the depths of her relief. To express the stark terror that had clutched at her heart at the thought of anything happening to him. She had survived her mother's death but Castle's—she was suddenly sure that she could not survive that. Not really. Would never get over losing him.

"I know," he murmured.

"There's just one thing I don't get. Why did he let you live?" she asked, the question escaping her before she'd really realized it.

He sighed heavily. "To punish me. Make me pay for ruining his plan. Now he's going to kill again, all because I couldn't stop him. Because I failed. And I feel so…"

Kate's heart hurt at the heaviness, the guilt in his voice.

She reached over to rest her hand on his knee, giving it a brief pressure, and he covered her hand with his, lacing their fingers together.

"I know the feeling," she told him quietly.

It was all she could say. She could have told him it wasn't his fault, that he shouldn't blame himself for the actions of Jerry Tyson. But she knew no amount of words would convince him. She was a cop. She understood. The weight of the world. It was a weight all true cops understood, one they felt. The cases that went cold, no matter how hard a cop worked it; the ones where the killer got away, in spite of a cop's internal certainty, from a lack of evidence to make an arrest. Those were the cases that haunted cops, the ones that kept them up at nights.

She knew the feeling, the way those failures ate at her, and that no amount of logic could convince her to feel differently. That burden—the sense of responsibility, of guilt—was a reality of the job. Captain Montgomery had taught her that.

And now Castle felt that burden too.

She hated that, hated that his association with her had exposed him to this sort of burden. He might have always been interested in murder and crime before they met—he was a mystery writer—but now, it had become personal, real to him.

"I know you do," he murmured and she felt a slight increase of pressure as he leaned into her a little more heavily. She tightened her grasp on his hand and wished, desperately, that there was more she could do, more she could say. He was such a comfort to her, her safe place. He made her feel safe. And she could only hope and pray that somehow, she could do the same for him. She wanted to do the same for him, wanted to help him as much as he helped her.

He didn't say anything more and neither did she. They only sat together, their hands clasped together, leaning against each other.

But after a while, she finally stirred a little. "Let's go home, Castle."

He tightened his grip on her hand almost convulsively. "Not quite yet. I need another minute. I don't want to see my mother yet."

"Okay," she agreed quietly.

He sighed and she felt his breath against her hair.

It was a short while, maybe five minutes, before he stirred, turning his head to kiss her hair before he said, "Thanks, Kate. We can go now."

The drive to the loft went by in silence, Castle staring out the window. Kate retained her grip on his hand, for once caring more about keeping her connection to him than she did about having both hands on the wheel. Their hands only separated in order for them to get out of her car but he slipped his hand into hers as they headed to his building.

Martha was waiting for them when they entered the loft, wrapped in a gaudily-colored silk robe. She leaped up the moment she saw them. "Oh, Richard!" She enveloped Castle in a hug that he returned, bending his head to kiss her cheek.

"I'm fine, Mother."

Martha drew back, cupping his cheeks in her hands for a moment. "You're really okay, Richard? What happened tonight? Were you in danger?"

Castle glanced at Kate before he answered, managing a faint smile, "I got in a bit of trouble but it turned out okay."

Martha didn't look entirely convinced. "Was it this Triple Killer?"

Castle sighed, sobering, and hesitated before he answered, "Yes, Mother, but I promise you I'm fine. There's nothing to worry about."

Martha turned to Kate. "Katherine, is that true?"

Kate summoned her best reassuring smile. "Yes, Martha, Castle's fine, as you can see. You don't need to worry." She couldn't quite bring herself to say that it was all over—because it wasn't, at all, but she could see that Castle didn't want his mother fretting over it.

Martha relaxed a little. "All right, if you say so, Katherine."

Castle summoned an injured expression. "Don't you trust me, Mother?" It was a valiant attempt to sound like his usual self and Kate suspected that it would have fooled anyone else except, unfortunately for Castle, his mother and Kate herself, who were probably the two people who knew him best in the world.

"Not about something that might be dangerous," Martha returned. "Now I think you both need to get some sleep. Richard, you look absolutely exhausted."

He managed a faint smile. "Yes, Mother." He kissed her cheek again. "You should sleep too. Good night."

Martha pulled Kate into a hug. "Good night, Katherine darling."

"Good night, Martha."

Castle and Kate turned wordlessly to each other once they were in his bedroom, their eyes locked as they stripped out of their clothes. She pulled him into a kiss as they fell back onto his bed, her body rising up to meet his touch.

Kate's eyes closed automatically as his lips left hers, skating down her chin, her neck, and lower. So good, he was always so good…

But for once, she stopped him, tangling her fingers in his hair and tugging gently, when she felt him slide further down on the bed. "Castle, I want you inside me," she gasped.

He listened, working his way back up her body, caressing her with his lips and his hands, while her hands explored his shoulders and his back. She gloried in his touch, in the confidence of his lips and hands knowing exactly where and how to touch her to make her gasp and moan. Just as she knew how to touch him, reveling in the familiarity of her hands sliding over beloved, heated skin.

He kissed her deeply before he slid inside her and she clutched him to her, returning his kiss with everything in her.

Castle. Her Castle.

They moved as one, slowly at first, the tempo rising as she tightened her grip on him, urging him on. She needed this, needed him, needed the tactile reassurance that he was alive, still here, still with her. And finally, she felt the last, lingering tension from the stark panic that had gripped her from the moment she'd realized the danger he was in dissipate, the chill of fear burned away in the heat of their bodies.

"Castle."

"Kate," he returned, breathing her name against her lips.

And it was very little time before they both came with soft cries that were swallowed by the other's lips.

He slumped above her and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, dropping soft, light kisses to his hair, his ear, his neck, random places within easy reach.

It wasn't long before he rolled over onto his back, bringing her with him so she settled half on top of him, her head resting on his chest.

She let her eyes close and relaxed, her body loose and boneless above him. She could feel his heart beating beneath her ear, its steady rhythm soothing.

He was silent for long enough that she thought he was falling asleep when he broke the silence. "How do you deal with it, the guilt?"

She stirred, lifting her head so she could look at him, see the lines of tiredness etched in the familiar planes of his face, the shadows still clouding the blue of his eyes. She was suddenly swamped by one of those uncharacteristic surges of protective tenderness that she was almost becoming accustomed to feeling when it came to him and to Alexis. She wished, irrationally, that she could somehow wrap his heart, his peace of mind, up in cotton wool, wanted to protect him from ever being hurt or disillusioned or troubled by anything ever again. It was silly and ridiculous of her because she, of all people, knew how strong he was. She thought about what he'd told her, about how he had walked in on Meredith cheating on him, and how he'd learned to forgive her, and marveled again at his resilience. It took a lot of strength to forgive someone who had injured you or betrayed you; Kate had struggled with it enough herself to know that.

If anyone was strong enough to bear the weight of the world, it was Castle—but that didn't keep her from wishing that he didn't need to bear this weight, to be haunted by guilt.

"You just… do," she answered him rather lamely. "You try not to dwell on it too much because otherwise it'll consume you, swallow you whole if you let it, but you won't be able to help it sometimes. It'll haunt you," she admitted, "but you just… learn to live with it." She paused and then added, "It helps to know you're not alone."

She was, again, being rather hypocritical, giving advice she was not good at taking herself since she wasn't good at sharing her burdens. But she was trying—and she wanted to be there for him.

He sighed a little and then caught her hand in his and brought it up to kiss her palm. "I know I'm not alone," he said quietly. "I've got you."

From anyone else, she might have disputed the possessive statement, but not from him.

She managed a faint smile. "Always."

He didn't respond in words but she felt the way his hand stroked her hair in a soft caress and that was enough.

Silence settled over them, warm and comfortable, and after a while, she felt the way the strain and worries of the long day drained out of him.

"Kate," he mumbled, his voice beginning to slur with sleepiness. "Love you."

She tightened her arms around him just a little. "I love you too."

The words got easier to say every time. And this time, they weren't tainted with any fear that they meant good-bye.

"Mm, good," he mumbled, the words barely intelligible. She felt his arms go limp around her and his breathing even out as he slid into sleep.

She smiled faintly and fell asleep herself to the reassuring steadiness of his heartbeat beneath her ear.

 _~To be continued…~_

* * *

A sort of housekeeping note: guest reviews are moderated so comments from trolls will only end up being deleted.

A/N 2: Thanks, everyone, for reading and rest assured that all actual reviews are read and appreciated.


	6. Chapter 5: Murder Most Fowl

Author's Note: I wasn't originally planning on writing a chapter that revolved around 3x8 "Murder Most Fowl," but in the end, I decided I had to because it's one of my favorite episodes from S3.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 5_

Castle knew he wasn't the most patient of people and he tended to be restless, both physically and mentally. He'd never been good at being still; he knew his tendency to fidget annoyed Beckett. He had learned, now, to read her looks so he knew when his fidgeting was getting to the point of really ticking Beckett off and he generally was able to suppress it for a little while. And the times when he wasn't able to turn off the restlessness, that was when he usually leaped up and made coffee for Beckett or ran out to grab snacks or generally found something to do that involved being away from Beckett's desk.

Today, he couldn't even pretend to settle down, tension and worry making him practically vibrate, and he thought for about the millionth time in the last hours since the moment they had found out that Light bulb Len's death had been the result of a kidnapping, that he hated abduction cases. He wrote about murders and as terrible as they were for those left behind, the victim's loved ones, murders were final. There was nothing more to hope for when the loved one was dead. Abduction was different; abduction allowed for a terrible, searing hope that poisoned the wound and never allowed it to heal. A child abduction—he was a father and some of his worst fears, his worst memories, centered around times when he hadn't known where Alexis was.

And this case was bringing it all back, those worst moments of his life, the ones that still haunted him.

A custodial abduction.

Castle twitched a little. He hated that term. It reminded him too strongly of the time Meredith had taken Alexis to Paris without telling him.

He still wasn't entirely convinced that this was a custodial abduction. He couldn't imagine a father who would point a gun at his son. And what kind of father even needed a gun to kidnap his own kid?

But the evidence was there and the fact remained that Dean Donegal had not reported his son missing, had not shown up at work.

Castle returned to his seat after calling Alexis, again. He thought he was rather annoying Alexis by now as he'd been calling her every hour or so, ostensibly to find out if she'd managed to find Theodore the Rat yet, which was, even by his standards, over-doing it, but this case, the plight of little Tyler, was getting to him. And well, he needed to hear his daughter's voice, be reassured that she was still safely at home, even if she was becoming increasingly frantic with worry as Theodore's vanishing weighed on her.

"Anything?" he asked as Beckett returned from talking with Tyler's mother and stepfather.

"She said that Dean has a cabin up in the Poconos. I'm going to call to have it checked out now."

He waited, taking off his watch and clutching it in his fists, because he needed to be gripping something and the alternative was ripping any paper in sight into shreds which would make a mess that Beckett would not appreciate.

Beckett put a call into the Pennsylvania State Police, giving them the rundown of the situation, and hung up. "Pennsylvania State Police are on their way to the cabin now. With any luck, we'll find Tyler."

She looked over at him, her voice and her expression softening. "You okay?"

"Can't imagine how Tyler's mother feels," he murmured. Except that wasn't true. He could imagine. He could imagine it all too well and the memories were shredding his composure.

"Yeah, me neither." She paused and then asked, "Is Alexis okay?"

His eyes flew up to hers, realizing that she must have guessed at least one reason for his frequent disappearances. "Yeah, she's fine. She's still freaking out over Ashley's pet rat, though."

A faint smile curved her lips, her eyes momentarily brightening. "Well, he must still be in the loft somewhere. She'll find him."

"Yeah," he agreed and then found himself blurting out, "Did I tell you that Meredith once took Alexis to Paris without telling me?"

Kate stilled, her expression blanking for a moment, as she looked at him. "I remember you mentioned that Meredith took Alexis to Paris for lunch one time."

His lips twisted a little. "Yeah, that was the plan but it was more like breakfast the next day by the time they got there. Meredith never did really have much of a grasp on things like time zones." He tried to sound amused at this little foible but knew he failed. He had never in his life been as angry with anyone as he'd been at Meredith that day. Hell, the memory of that day, in the rare times when he thought about it, still infuriated him. He didn't consider himself to be a violent person; he'd never been much of a fighter and he'd certainly never even thought about hitting a woman. But in the argument he'd had with Meredith after she and Alexis had returned from Paris, for the first, last, and only time in his life, the idea of hitting a woman had not seemed unthinkable—and it had shocked and horrified him out of a measure of his anger.

He was surprised out of his bleak memories when he felt her touch on his hand and he startled a little. Beckett rarely touched him when they were in the precinct; she was always careful to preserve some distance between them, kept her professional mask firmly in place. So for her to reach out and grip his hand spoke volumes for what his expression must have revealed of his thoughts.

"What happened, Castle? Do you—do you want to talk about it?"

His head jerked a little. "Not—not here. Not now." He couldn't talk about it now, not when they still didn't know what had happened to Tyler or whether Dean was involved and in what way. A custodial abduction—it cut too close. He met her eyes. "Ask me again when this is over."

She nodded, her thumb sweeping over the back of his hand in the tiniest of caresses. "All right. You sure you're okay?"

"I'll be fine once we find Tyler." And that was the truth. Assuming they found Tyler alive.

She sighed a little, looking away, and for just a moment, he saw the strain she was under, saw her own worry and fear over Tyler that she was concealing beneath her business-like demeanor. He suddenly remembered what Sorenson had said about the other abduction case that he and Kate had worked on before the Angela Candela case, that they had only found the kid's body.

He inwardly flinched at the thought.

And it was his turn to want to reassure and comfort her. He wished he could wrap his arms around her, hold her, and couldn't even be sure if the embrace would have provided more comfort to him or to her. But it didn't matter since it wasn't possible. They were in the precinct and Beckett wouldn't welcome any gesture on his part that made her seem vulnerable in any way.

All he could do was provide a momentary distraction.

"When Alexis was four, we went Christmas shopping at some mall in White Plains. I was trying on some charcoal fedora." He paused and saw the faintest smile curve her lips at that, knew she was mentally picturing him in a fedora. Well, he had no objection to that; he always thought he looked more ruggedly handsome in a fedora. "When I turned around, she was gone. I looked everywhere. So did mall security. So did the police. We searched for an hour."

"Where'd you find her?"

"Behind a rack of winter coats. She got bored. She crawled underneath there and went to sleep."

Her lips curved into a soft smile, a little amused huff of breath that might have been a laugh if it had been allowed to grow up escaping her. "Little Alexis," she murmured, affection lacing her tone.

"I should have known, should have found her sooner. It wasn't like Alexis to wander off."

"You found her, Castle. That's what matters."

"Yeah, but it was the worst hour of my life until we found her. To this day, I still dream about it."

"Did you have to sleep in Alexis's room that night?"

He smiled a little at this proof of how well Kate knew him now. "Yeah."

They were interrupted by Montgomery who came up to them and Kate immediately released his hand, straightening up in her chair.

"Just got off with Esposito. Looks like Dean is on the move."

"What did they find?" Beckett asked crisply.

"It's what they didn't find. No toothbrush, no deodorant, no shampoo in the shower."

"I'll run his credit card for anything that indicates he's travelling," Beckett said, picking up her phone and suiting action to the words.

After that, the action in the case picked up speed, leaving Castle relieved because having something to do didn't leave him time to worry.

* * *

Castle tried to pretend that he was a stoic, that he had nerves of steel or whatever allowed someone to stay cool and collected no matter the situation, but times like this, he knew it was a hopeless endeavor.

He was amazed, not for the first time, at Beckett's ability to stay calm, her Detective Beckett persona fully in place as she met his eyes and nodded. "On my count."

His palms were sweating and he hoped it wasn't obvious that his hands were actually trembling ever so slightly as he prepared to flip the switch on the Lenny box. It was, as he'd said, like it was meant to be, as if the spirit of Light bulb Len was still there, helping him and Beckett to save Tyler, the little boy whose kidnapping had brought about Len's death. He tried to comfort himself with the fitting closure of it but he really couldn't.

He might have thought, after all this time, that he would have become somewhat inured to knowing Beckett was going into a dangerous situation but it never got any easier. He had all the confidence in the world in Beckett's abilities—he did—but he knew she wasn't invincible.

And this case, Tyler's kidnapping, had been shredding his nerves for the last day since they'd first found out about it.

God, he hated kidnappings.

He kept his eyes on Beckett, his hand on the switch.

"Three. Two. One."

He flipped the switch at the same moment that Beckett kicked in the door. He flinched with every shot he heard and then there was silence and he waited for one heart-stopping second before he rushed into the tiny room to see Beckett cuffing the thug that he instantly recognized from the picture of the kidnapping, even from the side view. One of the man's shoulders and his arm was covered in blood.

Beckett turned to Tyler, who was shrinking back against the wall, staring wide-eyed and trembling at his kidnapper and at Beckett.

"Tyler? Hi, I'm Kate," Beckett introduced herself, her voice suddenly almost amazingly soft and gentle. "You're safe now. It's over." She settled next to Tyler on the bench, putting a careful arm around his shoulders.

Tyler gasped, holding himself stiffly, not relaxing against Beckett. "You're sure? Really? Where's my dad?"

"He's fine," Beckett assured him and then shot a look at Castle, along with a small jerk of her head, and he nodded and ran off to get back-up from the uniforms that had accompanied them down here and then to get up to a place where he had cell phone service so he could call Esposito or Ryan.

He didn't get service until he was almost all the way out of the subway station and he called Esposito immediately.

Esposito picked up after barely one ring. "Castle, where are you and Beckett?"

"We got Tyler," he answered almost before Espo had finished asking the question. "He's fine. The kidnapper's down, Beckett shot him. Where are you? Where's Dean Donegal?"

He heard Esposito let out a long breath. "Good. We've got Donegal and the rest of the gang. We're just about to head back to the precinct with them now."

Castle relaxed. It really was over. "Okay. We'll head back to the precinct soon, with Tyler. Tell Dean."

"Will do. See you soon."

Esposito ended the call and Castle hurried back down to the small room to find that the uniforms had taken possession of the kidnapper, were helping him to his feet (none too carefully, at that, and while he would never normally support being rough with someone who'd already been incapacitated, in this instance, he couldn't blame the uniforms for it. Anyone who would kidnap a child at gunpoint didn't deserve much consideration.)

Beckett looked up the moment he appeared.

Castle hunkered down in front of Tyler so he could meet the boy's eyes. "Hi Tyler. I just talked to another cop, who said that your dad's just fine. He's on his way back to the station right now."

Tyler dissolved into sobs, all the more because he was clearly struggling not to cry, and Kate tightened her arm around him, murmuring soothing words. Castle put a gentle hand on Tyler's shoulder, seeing in Tyler's breakdown now just how much the poor kid had been through, how terrified he must have been and what it must have taken him to stay relatively calm and clear-headed enough to send them that little message in the video. Brave, smart kid but now that it was over, a belated reaction was setting in.

Kate smoothed a gentle hand down Tyler's hair. "You're safe now, Tyler. It's all over. And you were so brave and so smart, Tyler, to think of sending that message about Ace. You helped us figure out where you were. You did it, Tyler, and now it's all over. You can see your dad in a little while."

Castle could only watch, felt oddly frozen, his chest tight as if it had somehow gotten too small for his heart.

This was what he wanted, he thought a little fuzzily.

And he was amazed, all over again, by Kate, at this glimpse of another facet of her personality. It was in the gentleness of her touch, the softness of her voice, as she comforted and reassured Tyler.

He was so used to seeing her as the capable, somewhat hard-nosed Detective Beckett. Even now, that was the side of her he saw the most, her cool confidence, her razor-sharp intelligence, her fierce determination. It was intoxicating, mesmerizing, to watch her at work still; he didn't think he would ever get enough of it.

But in these last months since her stay at the loft, he'd seen more of her softer side, seen her as Kate more than as Detective Beckett. He saw it in the way she talked to Alexis, saw it in the softness of her eyes and her smiles when she looked at him sometimes. He felt it in her touch and in her kiss in the times their love-making was slow and tender.

But this—this was different. This gentleness as she reassured Tyler, a protectiveness that was clear and had entirely won Tyler's trust. He could see that in the way Tyler was curled up against Kate now. After all that Tyler had been through, a wariness around anyone he didn't know would be entirely understandable and initially, as he'd seen before he'd left to get back up and call Esposito, Tyler had held himself apart but Kate had clearly won Tyler over in just the couple minutes he'd been gone.

She was going to be an amazing mom.

And he wanted that.

He wanted kids with Kate Beckett.

Oh god. It was a terrifying realization, leaving him almost dizzy afterwards.

Kids. With Kate.

He was terrified, stunned.

Realizing that he had fallen completely, irrevocably in love with Kate had been a less powerful revelation.

It was probably the most solemn promise he had ever made to himself, one he had never wavered on, would never waver on. It was a promise he had renewed with every time Meredith had disappointed Alexis. He had sworn that if he ever had more kids—which had never seemed very likely—he would only have kids with someone who would be a real mother with all that entailed, someone who would love the kids the way he would, someone who would never leave. He had sworn that he would only ever have kids with someone he was sure would be forever, that he would never have another kid who would be put through a divorce, the way Alexis had been.

He would never—could never—regret anything about having Alexis but he also never felt like he alone was enough for Alexis, still hated that he had never been able to give Alexis the mother she deserved.

He knew he hadn't been very good about even letting Gina be a mother figure to Alexis but Gina had not made an effort for very long either. Gina was a career woman first and foremost.

Now, he knew. He wanted kids with Kate Beckett.

He know how deeply Kate cared, knew how loyal she was, how dedicated she was. He could imagine how much Kate would love her children. Kate would never leave her kids, would never neglect her kids, would never break promises she had made to her kids.

Oh, he wanted it. Wanted Kate to be the mother of his future children.

It was way too soon. He knew that. Even if Kate wanted kids—he had no idea if she did—it was way too soon to mention it to her. Their relationship was barely six months old. And as well as things were going, as much as he knew that Kate loved him, a small part of him was still a little afraid, a little cautious. He still, even now, felt moments of incredulity, of doubt, that Kate was really his, that he might actually be enough for her.

It was too soon. But then again, his mind and his over-active imagination going leaps and bounds ahead of reality was nothing new in their relationship. He had after all started dreaming about marrying Kate before he'd even kissed her for the first time.

It was something to add to his bucket list. He thought of one of the items on that list— _get married and make it last_ —one he had only recently edited to add a parenthetical— _with Kate_.

Another item on the list: _make a family with Kate_.

Tyler's sobs had stopped and he swiped at his cheeks, sniffing. "I was brave," he declared, looking up, a hint of defiance entering his tone. "I was brave. I never cried, even when he… he shot that other man in the park."

"We know, Tyler. You were very brave. You were a hero," Kate told him giving him an approving smile.

Tyler managed the faintest smile at those words, the beginnings of boyish pride appearing.

"Now, are you ready to leave? Your dad really wants to see you," Beckett said.

"Can I use the bathroom first?" Tyler asked rather bashfully.

That made both Beckett and Castle smile as they stood up, Beckett offering her hand to Tyler, who slipped his hand into it willingly.

They went up to the lobby of the building and found the bathroom. Castle accompanied Tyler into the men's bathroom at a look from Beckett. The criminals might have been caught but with Tyler now in NYPD custody, he shouldn't be left unsupervised.

Castle washed his hands of the dirt from the Lenny box and then hovered rather awkwardly by the door waiting for Tyler.

Tyler emerged and then looked up at Castle as he washed his hands. "Are you a cop too?"

"My name's Rick, and no, I'm not a cop. I'm a writer."

Tyler frowned a little. "Then what are you doing with the cops?"

"I follow the cops to do research to find out how they work."

Tyler nodded his understanding.

After a moment, he looked back up at Castle, the first flicker of a real smile crossing his face, his eyes brightening, so that for the first time, Castle caught a glimpse of the active, outgoing young boy Tyler really was. "The lady cop's pretty."

Castle couldn't help but laugh a little. "She's very pretty."

"I'm glad she's the one who found me. I didn't know there are pretty lady cops."

"She is pretty cool," Castle agreed as he opened the door of the bathroom for Tyler.

Beckett was, of course, waiting for them just outside and she gave Tyler another smile. "All set, Tyler? Would you like a candy bar?"

She offered a chocolate bar that Tyler accepted eagerly, his face brightening into a rather gamine grin. "Thank you, Officer Kate."

She didn't correct him, only put a hand on his shoulder as they walked outside to where she'd parked her car.

The sun was just beginning to come out, making Castle belatedly aware that they had been up all night.

Following another look from Beckett, Castle slid into the back seat with Tyler, who finished off the chocolate bar, and then was silent, staring out the window. Castle, watching the boy, could see that he was beginning to droop. Understandably, since he couldn't imagine that Tyler had been able to sleep much since he'd been taken.

Once they arrived back at the precinct, Beckett held out her hand again to Tyler, who took it quite naturally as he looked up at her. "Where's my dad? Is he here?"

"He's inside. We'll go to him right now."

Castle saw Dean Donegal the moment they stepped off the elevator, waiting tensely as he sat in one of the visitor chairs.

Beckett nudged Tyler gently and pointed.

"Dad!" Tyler shouted and ran forward.

Dean started up and clutched Tyler in the sort of embrace a man reserved for the person he loved most in the entire world.

It tugged at Castle's heart. He knew how Dean felt. He had hugged Alexis like that after she had come back from Paris and after he had found her in the mall, had hugged her and never wanted to let her go again. As much as having kids was a terrifying, stressful, at times painful thing, it was also the source of some of life's moments of the most perfect joy and love. For all the gut-wrenching panic he had known in the endless hours when he hadn't known where Alexis was, for all the worry he felt over Alexis every day, it was all worth it—more than worth it—for every time he hugged Alexis or saw her smile at him or just watched her sleep.

He was distracted from watching Dean and Tyler's reunion when he felt Beckett slip her arm through his and glanced at her to see her soft smile as she nudged his arm.

"Come on, Castle. I think we could both use some coffee. They don't need an audience."

He fell into step beside her, a little surprised that she kept her arm linked with his. They were, after all, in the precinct and she almost never touched him while they were at work, although he supposed it was early enough that very few people were around to see anyway.

She glanced back at Tyler and Dean and then leaned into him a little more closely, letting her cheek rest lightly against his shoulder for a moment, as they went into the break room. Her expression was soft, her Detective Beckett mask momentarily lowered—he knew her too well to think that it would be anything but momentary while they were in the precinct. A faint smile was playing around her lips, her eyes filled with the tender light he didn't often see and certainly not at work. For a moment, he could see the depths of her caring heart, her compassion. And he thought, not for the first time, that Kate, in these moments when she let down her guard and let her emotions show, really was the loveliest woman in the world. Not that Kate Beckett was ever anything less than beautiful but beauty could be an intimidating thing. In moments like this, when you could see the vulnerable heart that was usually effectively hidden behind her Detective Beckett shield, Kate was more than beautiful. She was just… so, so lovely. And being able to see Kate in these moments was the greatest privilege of his life.

"Good job today," he told her softly.

She shook her head a little, ducking her head and lifting a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear in one of her habitual gestures when she was a little flustered. (She was adorable when she was flustered.) And it never failed to tickle him how she, the confident Detective Beckett, who could take compliments from anyone at work in her stride, occasionally reacted to praise from him with a measure of shyness. As if his good opinion mattered more to her than anyone else's… "You were the one who figured out what Tyler meant by Ace."

In the break room, he prepped the machine to make two coffees and while he waited, he took advantage of the fact that they were alone in the break room and the precinct was still quiet at this early hour to touch his fingers to her cheek in a light caress. She smiled, her eyes brightening, and lifted her own hand to his, keeping it in place against her cheek for another few seconds.

The espresso machine let out a puff of stream that indicated the coffee was ready and he reluctantly turned away from her to prepare two cups of coffee, making hers first and handing it to her before he made his own.

She touched her mug lightly to his in a small toast. "To Tyler's safe return."

"To safe returns," he agreed.

Her eyelids fluttered as she breathed in the scent of her coffee and then fell shut entirely as she took the first sip. And he had to grip the counter to keep from flattening himself against her and kissing her in a way that was entirely inappropriate for the precinct. Watching Kate drink freshly-brewed coffee tended to be arousing just because of the look of bliss on her face; watching Kate savor coffee that he had made for her was one of the most erotic things he had ever seen.

He shoved the thought aside. It was so not the time or place to be thinking like that. They were in the middle of the precinct which was slowly becoming more active and they had both been up all night. Captain Montgomery would, no doubt, want to hear about what had happened.

"You were great with Tyler today," he blurted out on the thought. He left unsaid the other half of that truth, that she was going to be an amazing mom one day, assuming she wanted to have kids.

"I'm just glad we got Tyler back safely," she demurred. "I was only doing my job."

"No, you did more than that, Beckett. The way you managed to comfort Tyler. He'd been traumatized and terrified but he trusted you almost immediately."

"I barely knew what I was saying. I felt like I was babbling."

"You never babble." She didn't. The very idea of it was inconceivable. (Literally—and not in the _Princess Bride_ sense.)

He gave her a teasing smirk, instead of spilling out all he wanted to about how much her caring had shone through and what kind of mother she would be. "I think you've got yourself a new fan. Tyler told me that he thinks you're pretty."

She laughed. "Worried about competition, Castle?"

He pretended to think about it. "I think I can take him."

She smirked. "Wow, brave, Castle, taking on a 12 year old."

"You were the one that said Tyler was a hero."

Beckett opened her mouth to respond but before she could, Montgomery appeared in the doorway.

"Beckett. Castle. Glad to see you back along with the kid. Ready to tell me what happened?"

Beckett straightened up and nodded crisply. "Yes, sir."

And just like that, it was back to work.

* * *

Castle looked up in surprise as Beckett let herself into the loft using her key.

Alexis and Ashley were watching Theodore, now restored to his cage, with a fascination that Castle thought was entirely unjustified since the rat was only drinking water. Theodore had been found in his mother's closet, having made a nice little nest for himself in one of her brightly-colored silk scarves, much to his mother's horror. And he already knew that his mother was, aside from insisting on dry-cleaning every item in her closet, going to use the excuse to buy more clothes. He inwardly grimaced for his credit card.

"Beckett, what are you doing here?"

"The Captain gave us the rest of the day and the weekend off. I thought I'd stop by to see if the Great Rat Hunt of 2010 was over," she grinned at him before turning to smile at Alexis and Ashley. "Hi, Alexis. And you must be Ashley."

Ashley scrambled to his feet while Alexis only waved. "Hi, Kate. Kate, this is Ashley. Ash, this is Kate."

"Hi, Ashley. I've heard a lot about you."

"It's very nice to meet you, Detective Beckett."

Castle could see from Beckett's smile that she approved of Ashley. Well, he had to admit that the boy was polite. It went against every fatherly instinct he had but he was warming up to Ashley himself. Which didn't mean that he wasn't going to take the opportunity to have a little bit of fun at Ashley's expense.

"So, Beckett, how is the guy you shot this morning doing?" he asked and inwardly smirked at the way Ashley's eyes widened, although he carefully kept his expression mildly curious.

She shot him a look and he realized that she knew exactly what he was doing. (Dating a woman who was brilliant and perceptive had its drawbacks. Damn it.) "The kidnapper is recovering nicely in the hospital and has already signed his confession admitting his role in the plot," she answered with a faint emphasis on the word, kidnapper, as if to reassure Ashley that he was quite safe.

Alexis leaped up, shooting him a distinctly scolding look. She knew what he'd been doing too. (Bother. Did every woman in his life have to be able to read him so easily?) "Ash, I'll help you get Theodore back to your place. Dad, Kate, I'll see you later."

Ashley was almost transparently glad to be leaving the loft—with Alexis, Castle noted, with something less than pleasure—and it was a very few minutes before the two teenagers had finished gathering up the various paraphernalia that had accompanied Theodore to the loft along with Theodore himself, safely in his cage, and left the loft.

Beckett gave him a reproving look the moment they were alone, although the look was rather belied by the way she settled next to him on the couch, allowing him to easily slip an arm around her shoulder. "Castle, really, I thought you'd gotten over your irrational dislike of Ashley."

"I was just having a little bit of fun," he defended himself. "It's not like I'm actually going to ask you to shoot him."

"Even if you asked, I wouldn't shoot him," she told him rather tartly.

He gave an exaggerated sigh. "Well, really, why do I keep you around if not to shoot any boys who get too close to Alexis?"

She laughed and rested her head against his shoulder. "When I think of a reason, I'll let you know," she quipped.

"Tired, Beckett? You've been awake for more than 30 hours straight."

"So have you," she returned.

"You could nap."

"I never take naps."

The statement would have had a little more force if she hadn't leaned into him a little more, letting him know just how tired she was. Beckett—she of the generally perfect posture—wasn't usually given to leaning on him (or anyone) and certainly not in the middle of the day. It was something he'd learned over these last few months, that Beckett became more amenable to snuggling the more tired she was, which naturally tended to coincide with late evenings.

"So where did you finally find Ashley's rat?" she asked after a moment.

"My mother found him in her closet."

She laughed softly. "How is Martha doing after that discovery?"

"Well, if I know my mother, she's out replacing her entire wardrobe to make up for it," he grumbled with a displeasure that was only half-feigned.

"Which you will pay for," she finished for him. "You're very sweet to Martha."

"She's my mother," he said simply and then found himself adding, before he'd realized he was going to, "And I'd buy her 50 closet-fuls of clothes just to make up for what she did the time Meredith took Alexis to Paris."

"What happened that day, Castle?"

Her voice was quiet, gentle, but his arm tightened almost convulsively around her shoulders anyway and he had to forcibly relax his grip.

He shouldn't have brought up that day. He tried not to think about it or only laugh it off as an example of Meredith being, well, Meredith. But the memory of it was still too close to the surface after what had happened to Tyler, even if Dean had turned out to be innocent.

But he had promised he would tell her, hadn't he?

"Alexis was 8. Meredith took her out of school in the morning. She knew where I kept Alexis's passport so she'd stopped off at the loft to get it. I was out so I had no idea." He spoke jerkily in rather staccato sentences. Telling the bare facts was one thing and hard enough.

"I didn't know anything until I went to Alexis's school in the afternoon to pick her up and her teacher told me that Meredith had come by and taken Alexis." He paused and then added, "Alexis's school knew who Meredith was, of course; I had insisted on introducing Meredith to Alexis's teachers because all the other moms knew the teachers and I didn't want Alexis to feel left out or like her mom didn't care." Meredith taking Alexis to Paris had put an end to his trying to make Meredith act more like a normal mom, concerned with her kid's schooling.

"I thought that Meredith had just taken Alexis out shopping; she'd done that a couple times before. But then it got to be dinner time and they didn't come back and I really started to panic. I'd been calling Meredith's cell phone and left her a dozen messages but she didn't call back."

He stopped again, abruptly, and he felt Kate lift her head and kiss his jaw, softly, and something about the tender caress calmed him, the tension in his jaw easing. She didn't say anything but then she didn't need to. It still surprised him sometimes, the way Kate so freely comforted him with her touch since he wouldn't have imagined it in the prickly Detective Beckett he had first met. It amazed him, too, how her presence could be so soothing, comforting. Kate was the most fascinating person he had ever met, always intriguing and never boring, and goodness knows he still tended to get an adrenaline rush just from being in her presence sometimes. But with all that, he found peace with her too. She quieted his peripatetic brain.

"I don't know what I'd have done if it hadn't been for my mother," he went on, more quietly. "She was in a play at the time and due to go on stage that evening but once she realized how much I was freaking out, she left rehearsal immediately and let an understudy go on in her place. And for Martha Rodgers, the force of devotion can no further go because my mother always prided herself on never missing a performance and would probably have insisted on going on stage even if she were in a full-body cast," he added, his voice softening. "But Mother came over and she stayed with me that entire evening and overnight. She kept me sane."

"Dear Martha," Kate murmured.

"I don't know if I ever thanked her for that or told her what it meant to me but for that day alone, aside from anything else, I'd indulge my mother and pay all her bills for the rest of her life." It was true. For all that he and his mother gave each other hard times, for all that his childhood memories of his mother did tend to involve a lot of nannies and time spent with friends or left to amuse himself while his mother was performing, when it had really mattered, his mother had been there. And having to raise Alexis alone had given him a better understanding of just how hard his mother would have found it to raise him on her own while working.

"You might not have told her in words but Martha knows you love her."

"I know she does." He paused and then went on, "By the time dinnertime came, I was frantic and just about to call the police to report that Alexis had been… kidnapped," he broke off sharply.

"A custodial kidnapping," she said quietly and he knew she understood exactly why he had been so upset earlier.

Now eager to finish the story, he only continued, "Meredith finally called me though and told me that she had taken Alexis to Paris and that they were at a hotel, would stay and eat a late breakfast, and then fly back the next day. I've never been so mad at anyone in my entire life."

"But Alexis got back safely," she interjected, her voice low, soothing.

"Yes, she did, thank God, but I don't think I breathed properly until I saw her again. She was exhausted and upset because she'd had to spend a night without Monkey Bunkey, but she was fine."

"How do you do it, Castle, still stay on amicable terms with Meredith after she did something like that?"

"Meredith and I had a knock-down drag-out fight once she got back and after that, I didn't speak to Meredith for the next six months or so, I was so angry. But she is Alexis's mother and I didn't want Alexis to lose that so eventually, we sort of patched things up and I learned to just accept that it was just another example of Meredith thinking only about herself. It wasn't like she meant to make me worry so much; it just never occurred to her that I would be worried about Alexis."

Kate wrapped her arm around him and lifted her head to kiss his cheek. "I think, Castle, you might be the most forgiving person I've ever met."

His heart stuttered in his chest. He would never ever get over it, he thought, having Kate Beckett say such things to him and more than even her words, hearing the warmth in her voice.

"I forgave Meredith for Alexis's sake. It's not—it wasn't because _I_ wanted to forgive Meredith. But a father would do anything for his daughter—or his son, as we saw with Dean Donegal."

She put one hand to his cheek, turning his head until he met her eyes.

"You, Rick Castle, are a very good dad," she told him quietly.

"I try to be. I've always felt like I needed to do better, be more, to make it up to Alexis for Meredith being, well, the way she is. I worry that I'm not enough for Alexis, that I haven't been enough to make up for not having two real parents," he admitted, not quite fluently, voicing an insecurity he had never put into words with anyone else before. He was a little amazed that he was admitting it now to Kate but something about her steady gaze seemed to compel candor while the affection—the love—he could see shining out of the green-gold depths of her eyes made it easier to talk about his doubts.

Intimacy was the word that came to mind, not physical intimacy but emotional intimacy, a much rarer, more precious thing. Intimacy and trust. He trusted Kate not just with his life or even with his heart but also trusted her with… his weaknesses. He trusted that with her, he could be himself, could tell her about his insecurities, his doubts, and she would understand. She really was his best friend and so much more…

He suddenly thought of a line from Dorothy Sayers, something Lord Peter Wimsey had said to his wife, "You're my corner and I've come to hide." Kate was his "corner."

"You've been enough for Alexis, Castle. Anyone who sees you with her would recognize that. And remember you're always going to be Alexis's go-to guy."

The words, the memory of Alexis telling him that, made him smile. "Thank you, Kate," he blurted out. "For listening."

She smiled, softly, and then she kissed him—and as always, that was enough. _She_ was enough; she was everything.

 _~To be continued…~_

* * *

A/N 2: My take on the Meredith taking Alexis to Paris story that I always thought was one that must haunt Castle's nightmares the most (until S5's "Target" and "Hunt") and Castle opening up about the painful parts of his past is an important part of Castle and Beckett's relationship.

As always, thank you, everyone, for reading. All reviews are very much appreciated!


	7. Chapter 6: Close Encounters

Author's Note: Returning to a happy AU since canon this season is being so relentlessly aggravating. A long, fun chapter based on 3x9, "Close Encounters of the Murderous Kind." As usual, expect some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 6_

The call about a body in an abandoned car came early. Kate stopped by at the loft to pick up Castle on the way to the scene. It wasn't on the way but there was no point in making Castle find his own way to the scene when they would only be heading back to the precinct together. Anyway, after a night spent apart, she was (she had to admit, if only to herself) all too happy to have some time alone with him before they got sucked into this next case, even if it was time spent driving.

Castle was waiting for her outside the loft with two coffees, as always, and ridiculously, she felt a little tendril of warmth blossom in her chest at the sight, reminded of the way he'd told her that he brought her coffee because he liked to see her smile. "Good morning, Castle."

The moment he was seated, Castle leaned over and brushed a quick kiss to the corner of her lips. "Morning, Beckett. As usual, you have impeccable timing."

She smiled almost in spite of herself at the unusual tender gesture accompanying his greeting. He was usually so good about treating her much as he always had before they got together whenever they had a case and she loved him for it because she knew perfectly well that it didn't really come naturally to him to mask his feelings or the real nature of their relationship and he was doing so only for her sake. "Isn't it a little early in the day to already be getting into trouble, Castle?" she asked teasingly.

He threw her a look of feigned shock. "I do not get into trouble! I don't know how you can say that."

She smirked. "Sure you don't, Castle," she said with palpable sarcasm.

He pouted. "Don't be mean, Beckett."

She only laughed at him. "Well, why did you say my call was so timely?"

He made a face. "I got myself into a bit of a sticky situation with my mother."

"Oh, Castle, what did you say this time?"

"You remember that Alexis and I are going hiking next weekend and I agreed to let Ashley come with us. Apparently, Ashley's parents want to meet me before they'll allow him to come."

She nodded. "That makes perfect sense. A responsible parent hardly wants to send their kid away on any kind of trip with an adult they haven't met yet."

"Yes, well, Ashley's parents want to meet me so I agreed to invite them over for dinner sometime this week and my mother volunteered to cook for this dinner."

Oh, she could guess where this was going now.

"And I blurted out 'no, we want to impress them.'"

Kate sternly suppressed a laugh, although a small snort escaped in spite of herself. "I take it Martha wasn't pleased."

"She demanded to know what I meant by that—and then you called before I'd managed to think of an answer. And I was, quite literally, saved by the bell—and the Beckett."

She laughed at his quip as she knew he wanted her to. "Glad to be of service, Castle. So it's 'meet the parents' time, huh? This is a pretty critical moment for you."

"Me? Why me?"

She smiled slightly at this question, amused at this rather surprising display of uncharacteristic naivete on Castle's part. Unlike him, but then again, he'd barely come around to accepting that Alexis had a boyfriend at all so she supposed he would hardly have stopped to consider the ramifications of meeting his daughter's boyfriend's parents for the first time.

They had arrived at the railway yard and she parked her car before she answered.

"Well, Ashley is Alexis's first love. What do you think will happen if you don't get on with his parents?"

"She'll lose interest in him?" he suggested hopefully.

"Oh no, the exact opposite. It'll make the romance feel forbidden and she'll be off doing God-knows-what. Trust me. I know."

"I never thought of it that way." He frowned a little.

"My advice is keep the boyfriend close but the parents closer," she quipped, only half-facetiously.

"Well, you'll have a chance to put your advice into action yourself, Beckett, because Alexis wants you to come to this dinner too."

Kate's steps paused as she turned to stare at Castle. "She does?"

"Yeah, she said so. She's going to call you later to ask you herself."

"Did she say why she wants me to come?"

He shrugged. "Does she need a reason? She cares about you, Kate, and you've probably talked to her about Ashley more than I have at this point. You'll come, won't you?"

"Yes, I'll be there," she agreed and really, what else could she possibly say? She cared too much about Alexis—and about Castle—to say anything else (and she couldn't deny a sneaking curiosity to meet Ashley's parents herself). She just wanted to talk to Alexis first, find out more about what Alexis hoped would happen at this dinner.

But at the moment, she had no more time to think about it as she ducked under the crime scene tape around the car where the body had been found—and the body's appearance effectively banished all other thoughts from her mind.

* * *

Kate's phone rang. "Beckett."

"Hi, Kate, it's Alexis."

Kate smiled. "Hey, Alexis."

"Kate, did Dad mention to you that Ashley's parents are coming over for dinner on Sunday?"

"Yes, he did."

"Good. So can you come, Kate?"

Kate bit back her automatic acceptance. She was beginning to understand why Castle had such trouble saying no to Alexis since she herself was developing an instinctive wish to acquiesce to anything Alexis asked for. It was hard not to, caring about the girl the way she did and Alexis didn't really tend to ask for things that often and so when she did ask, Kate automatically wanted to say yes. "Alexis, it's nice of you to invite me but are you sure you want me to be there?"

"Yes, of course, Kate," Alexis answered easily. "Why wouldn't I want you to be there? Besides, it's on the weekend and you usually spend weekends at the loft anyway."

And there was the potential problem. "Alexis, you know you don't have to invite me to everything you and your family does," she said carefully. "It's sweet of you but I promise I won't feel left out or have my feelings hurt if you just want your Dad and your grandmother there."

"Oh, no, Kate, that's not it at all. I really want you to be there and so does Ashley," she added.

Kate blinked. "He does? That's… nice of him." Nice of him and a little surprising since she had, after all, only met Ashley in passing a few times now. "Well, it'll be nice to see Ashley again."

"Actually, he won't be there and neither will I. Ashley's parents thought it would be better if it was just a grown-up dinner, make it easier for them to really get to know Dad and Grams if Ashley and I weren't around as distractions."

"Oh. You really want me to come, Alexis? It sounds like this is supposed to be a meet the parents thing and I'm…" she hesitated but there was no other way put this really. "I'm just your dad's girlfriend." The term seemed so… odd and inappropriate but what other term was there? She was Castle's partner—but somehow that word was both more and less than what she and Castle were now; after all, they had been partners for far longer than they had been together romantically. "Won't Ashley's parents think it's a little… weird to have me there? I don't want to make things awkward. I know how important this dinner is to you."

"Kate, this dinner is so Ashley's parents can meet my family and you're family too."

Kate couldn't help but smile, feeling warmth suffusing her chest. "Thank you, Alexis," she said softly. "I'll be happy to come."

"Oh good! And Kate, the other reason Ashley and I both want you to be there is because, well, Ashley's parents are serious people. Ashley's dad is an economics professor. They're… sort of traditional. And I love my dad and Grams but you know they're not…" Alexis trailed off, hesitating.

"Not the most serious of people," Kate finished for her gently. Castle was much more capable of being serious than she would have thought a year ago but he was also, still, very much the man-child and he still retained enough of his class clown persona that he tended to act out and behave sillier than he actually was when he was bored or felt any event was too staid. Silliness and humor was also his default defense mechanism when he was ill at ease and a dinner with Ashley's parents was precisely the sort of thing that would trigger Castle's rare bouts of nervousness.

"Exactly," Alexis agreed with relief clear in her voice. "That's why I want you there, Kate. You're a serious person too and you can make Dad behave. He'll listen to you."

Kate couldn't help but laugh a little at Alexis's neat way of ensuring Castle's good behavior. "Your Dad would behave if you asked him to, Alexis. He knows how important this is to you."

"I know but it's hard for him to stay serious for too long and I won't be there to stop him if he slips up."

"And that's what I'll be there for," Kate summarized. Well, she couldn't really object to that.

"So you'll do it? Oh, thank you, Kate!"

Kate smiled. And that was the other reason she always wanted to give in to Alexis's infrequent requests. The girl was always so transparently and sincerely thankful and so enthusiastic about expressing her thanks. In a corner of Kate's mind, she wondered how much of that was due to Alexis's lingering hesitation about relying on anyone aside from her dad and her grandmother to be there for her, since no other woman in her father's life had ever stuck around for Alexis before, including her own mother. She thought Alexis was gradually beginning to realize how much Kate cared about Alexis in her own right but every once in a while, it seemed that some of Alexis's ingrained insecurity reared its head. "You don't have to thank me, Alexis. I'm happy to come. I'd like to meet Ashley's parents too." Which was true enough. "Say, Alexis, how are your classes going?" she changed the subject. "You had that quiz in physics this week, didn't you? How did that go?"

She listened as Alexis expatiated on the subject of her classes for a few minutes before the call ended.

She found herself smiling to herself as she finished eating her dinner. Alexis had said she was family. It was what she wanted to be, hoped to be. She knew she wasn't Alexis's mother, could not be Alexis's mother, but she did want to be family in Alexis's eyes. And she could only hope that she could, somehow, make it a little easier on Alexis in the times when her own mother's absence hurt.

Just as knowing that she had Castle and Alexis and, yes, Martha too, made the loss of her mother a little less painful in some indefinable way. The gaping hole in her life, in her heart, left by her mother's death still hurt, would always hurt, but in some way, it hurt less now. Her mom couldn't be replaced but now, at least, she knew she wasn't alone the way she had felt for so long after her mother's death. She had a family again, people who cared about her, loved her, even worried about her, yes, as odd as it was for her, who tended to shrug off expressions of concern, to value knowing that people worried about her. Except she found she did, it mattered to her. Because the worry stemmed from love and for too long, she hadn't really felt as if anyone worried about her well-being or her safety. Her dad had been too lost in the haze of alcohol and his own misery to fully be conscious of worrying about her and for the NYPD, she was replaceable, one among many other officers.

It was different now. She had her dad back. And she had Castle—Castle, who insisted she take a break and eat a real lunch when she was at work, who wheedled her into eating an actual breakfast and not just coffee when she stayed at the loft and who, even now, brought her a bear claw along with coffee about half the mornings when she hadn't stayed over at the loft. And Martha, whom she knew from Castle and Alexis asked after her well-being on a daily basis.

Kate's thoughts were interrupted by her phone going off and she was unsurprised to see that it was Castle. They always talked on the phone in the evenings they didn't spend together—usually it was Castle who called her but occasionally she beat him to it and called him first. "Hey, Castle," she greeted him. "If you called to read me excerpts from Benny Stryker's book, I warn you I'm hanging up," she said lightly, since she knew he'd planned to spend the evening reading it. He was so convinced that aliens were involved in this case. (And while she'd been poking fun at him for it, part of her couldn't help but enjoy seeing the way his eyes lit up with enthusiasm as he talked about alien abductions and Men in Black. He was just… cute… And god, she really did have it bad.)

"Beckett, where do you come down on deficit spending during an economic downturn?" he asked immediately, forgoing a greeting.

She blinked and actually drew her phone away from her ear to stare at it for a moment. The question was so far removed from what she'd been expecting for a moment she half-expected to see that she'd misread the caller ID on her phone. No, it was really Castle. "I take the theory that's held by most economists," she answered smoothly, "that deficit spending is acceptable as long as it focuses on public investments like infrastructure, defense, education, research."

There was a pause and then he responded, "I'm a little disturbed that I found you saying that to be hot."

She laughed. "Thank you, I think."

"I'm highly evolved, Beckett. I find brains in a woman to be sexy," he quipped. "Seriously, though, where did that answer come from?"

"A semester of Economic Theory at NYU. Where did that question come from?"

"Trying out conversation starters."

"Do you usually need conversation starters to come up with something to say to me?" she teased.

He laughed. "Beckett, if everyone were as easy to talk to as you are, my life would be so much nicer, believe me. No, this is for the dinner with Ashley's parents. Apparently he's this stuffy economist so I just want to be ready with something to say to him."

She grinned. "Wow, Castle, you're really willing to sit through an entire dinner with an economics professor lecturing you on deficit spending?"

"Well, apparently, _I_ won't have to, will I? _You_ can talk to him about economics and my mother and I can concentrate on charming Ashley's mom."

"Gee, thanks, Castle," she said dryly. "Leaving the boring conversation to me, how nice of you."

"I believe in an efficient utilization of resources, Beckett," he huffed in an exaggeratedly pompous tone. "The aim is to impress Ashley's parents so I'm going to enlist my best asset to win over his father: you." His tone switched to become more serious. "This is important to Alexis and that means it's important to me. I just want to win Ashley's parents over, get them on my side. What if they don't take to me?"

"Oh come on, Castle, they'll take to you." She found it hard to imagine anyone not taking to Castle; he was, as she knew all too well, very hard not to like. Irritating, yes, but hard to outright dislike. And when he really put his mind to being liked, she couldn't imagine him failing.

"Really? Thanks."

Of course, admitting that to herself was one thing; admitting it to him was another thing entirely. "Yeah, so long as you don't act like yourself," she retorted teasingly.

He huffed. "Nice one," he admitted rather grudgingly.

She laughed out loud. "You walked right into that one, Castle."

"Fine, yes, I did. You could try to be a little nicer to me, Beckett. If I do something stupid and make Ashley's parents hate me and that ruins Alexis and Ashley's relationship, Alexis will never forgive me."

"It's going to be fine, Castle. I think the most you have to worry about is that Ashley's parents will decide you're a little strange but they'd be right about that."

He laughed. "Thank you, I think."

"Just try not to mention that you're convinced that Marvin the Martian's relatives came down and killed Marie Subbarao so they don't think you're completely crazy."

"Beckett, you wound me," he declared in mock offense. "Even I know that Marvin the Martian is fictional since he's a cartoon character."

She grinned into her phone. "That's quite the concession from you. Did you just now realize that cartoons aren't real?"

"You're being mean again, Beckett."

"You're being ridiculous again, Castle," she parroted his tone.

"At least admit that this case has raised the _possibility_ of an otherworldly solution. I mean, really, explosive decompression as a cause of death? You're not just a little bit intrigued?"

"It's a unique cause of death," she acknowledged. "But I don't admit that the solution is otherworldly. We are just searching for an ingenious human killer."

He sighed as if deeply disappointed. "Detective Skeptical strikes again. You know, Beckett, for someone who's a fan of _Nebula 9_ , I thought you'd be just a little more excited about the idea of space and a zero-gravity atmosphere being involved."

She rolled her eyes a little. Castle was never going to let her live down liking _Nebula 9_. "I liked the _fictional_ world and characters of _Nebula 9_. That doesn't mean I'm going to start looking for fictional solutions to real-life murders."

"What about fictional solutions to fictional murders? Ooh, I should write a book where Nikki has to solve a murder caused by explosive decompression!"

"And have the killer be an alien? That might make it a little hard for Nikki to make an arrest."

"The killer could be a human, just a space-travelling human."

"These are the voyages of a murderous astronaut," she began teasingly, deliberately pitching her voice into an imitation of Captain Kirk's opening narration for _Star Trek_. "His mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. And to kill his enemies."

"Up until that last part, that might have been the hottest thing I've ever heard you say."

She laughed. "First it's economics talk and now it's quoting _Star Trek_. If I didn't know better, I'd think you just find me hot, period," she quipped.

"I guess it's lucky you do know better." She could easily picture his smirk, the mischief and the humor dancing in his eyes.

"Yeah, lucky," she agreed, grinning down at her lap as one hand automatically came up to play with her hair. She suddenly, ridiculously, felt almost as young as Alexis, with a silly smile on her face as she talked to her boyfriend on the phone. Her boyfriend! But for once, the rather adolescent term didn't seem all that inappropriate. The last time she could remember ever feeling quite so giddy with happiness to be talking on the phone with anyone had been as a teenager so it seemed fitting somehow to think of Castle as her boyfriend at this moment.

Castle went on talking, sketching out a plot for this extraterrestrial mystery of Nikki's, a book she knew he had no intention of ever writing, but she also knew that sometimes he just liked to spin random stories. Probably much as he must have done when Alexis had asked him to tell her a story when she'd been little.

She listened and made the occasional teasing interjection and all the while, she was aware of the irrepressible smile curving her lips, the warm contentment welling up inside her chest.

He just… made her happy—and that was everything.

* * *

Kate woke up slowly, feeling stiff and achy as if she'd slept in an awkward position. Her mind felt fuzzy and there was an odd, bitter taste in the back of her mouth. What—

Her eyelids still felt heavy so she didn't try to open her eyes, stayed still as she attempted to get her bearings.

Strange, she wasn't usually so slow to wake up in the mornings…

She frowned a little, trying to remember, and her cheek rubbed against material that was definitely not her pillow case.

Oh, wait. She knew that scent. Castle. She must have fallen asleep leaning against Castle. She relaxed a little. If she was with Castle…

Odd that she was angled against him so uncomfortably though. So much space between their bodies so only her head was resting against him. That wasn't nice.

Slowly, as she took stock of the physical sensations, her mind gradually caught up, flashes of memory coming back.

The case. They had gone to the observatory. Her car had stopped. Then… a bright light, followed by a dark room. No Castle. An interrogation.

An injection.

Oh. Oh god.

Beside her, she felt Castle stir, a little rumble of a groan escaping him. Castle—she knew a moment of relief that he was there, that whoever had detained them had returned them both.

Her neck was still stiff but she moved her head, managed to lift it just enough so she could blink up at him.

His eyes looked a little cloudy, hazy with the lingering after-effects of whatever they had been injected with, but then he blinked and his gaze focused on her.

"Kate," he husked. "You okay?"

"Yes." Her voice came out raspy and she cleared her throat a little. "You?"

A faint frown crossed his face. "Yeah. My mouth tastes funny."

"Castle… what happened?"

He frowned again more definitely. "Do you not remember?"

"I remember. I just… can't believe it."

"Men in black are less fun in reality," he grumbled and she felt the first flicker of amusement break through her lingering haze and growing disbelief. Men in black and shadowy government conspiracies—really?

He grimaced and turned his head. "Do I have a—"

"Oh, Castle," she breathed as she saw the angry red mark on his neck. Her hand lifted to touch it but she hesitated, her fingers brushing his neck around the mark but avoiding the mark itself. She suspected she had a similar mark on her own neck, a spot that stung sharply.

It was something of a struggle but she levered herself up just enough so she could brush her lips fleetingly over the red spot, sensing the little ripple of sensation that went through him.

"You kissing it better, Beckett?" he asked and she could hear in his voice that he was attempting to sound teasing but not quite succeeding.

His hand was gentle as he swept her hair aside to reveal the matching red mark on her own neck.

He skimmed his fingertips against the sensitive skin of her neck around the mark with a feather-light touch and she felt his touch reverberate through her, noting peripherally that she'd never known anyone whose touch could affect her so strongly. "Kate," he sighed and leaned down in his turn to brush his lips over the mark so lightly she felt it almost more as a flutter of air next to her skin than the touch of his lips. The angry mark still throbbed but the touch of his lips was gentle enough that it didn't aggravate the sting in the slightest.

And in spite of everything, in spite of the situation, she felt something inside her flutter and melt. He could be so incredibly gentle. For all his strength, when he wanted to be, he was so amazingly, heart-stoppingly gentle.

She knew his strength now, not just the visible evidence from the breadth of his shoulders or the muscles of his arms, but because of the way he picked her up with apparent ease sometimes. And he had, of course, carried her away from her burning apartment building almost eight months ago—the night that she sometimes thought now had marked the actual start of her and Castle's real relationship. Because that was when she'd had to move into the loft and really started falling in love with him—although she hadn't realized it or admitted it to herself or anyone else for weeks.

She'd fallen in love with him for his strength—his strength of character, the strength of his heart—but she loved his gentleness too.

Castle leaned forward to peer up at the now-empty sky and then around them. "I think they—whoever they were—are gone."

She experimentally tried to turn the key in the ignition but wasn't entirely surprised when nothing happened. Whatever "they" had done to knock out the battery in her car, she guessed the effect on her car would make it unusable for at least a while. Maintenance would probably need to replace the battery, which they would grumble over.

With a little less hope, she pulled out her phone and restarted it and then smiled as she saw that her phone, at least, appeared to be working again. She called Montgomery who immediately said he would send people out to pick them up and drive them back to the City and to retrieve her car.

Ending the call, she turned to Castle. "Montgomery's sending someone to get us. He said it'd probably be about half an hour before anyone arrives; he's going to coordinate with the New Jersey state police."

He nodded. "I'll text Alexis and my mother, tell them I'll be home late and not to wait up."

She sighed a little and let her head fall back against his shoulder, although she angled herself more comfortably this time.

"Beckett, you really okay?"

She nodded so her cheek rubbed against his shoulder. "Just a little tired. My head still feels… heavy, somehow, from that injection."

He shifted and moved his arm to curl it around her shoulder, settling her more snugly against him.

They were silent for a little while and then he asked, "We have half an hour before someone will come pick us up?"

She smiled slightly. "Yes. And no, I am not having car sex with you while we're stranded on the Jersey Turnpike," she said facetiously.

"Does that mean you'll have car sex with me somewhere else?"

She huffed a soft laugh, since she could tell from his tone that he was only trying to distract her. Just as she had brought it up as a distraction since she hadn't actually thought that he'd been about to suggest that they have car sex anyway. "Maybe, if you're lucky," she quipped.

"I'm always lucky."

"Mm. Does your luck extend to being kidnapped by men in black?"

"At least they returned us to your car?" He paused. "Although my guy refused to confirm or deny that there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll."

She couldn't help her laugh and somehow, irrationally, felt as if the spot on her neck from the injector stung just a little less because of it. "You asked about JFK's assassination?"

"What else would you ask a mysterious government agent but about one of the most consequential conspiracies in American history?"

"You would think that mysterious government agents would be the last people to reveal anything about government conspiracies of any kind. They're trained not to give up secrets, after all."

"You're ruining my story with your logic again."

She smiled again. He could always make her smile, couldn't he? She felt rather more like her normal self now but she didn't lift her head from his shoulder. He was comfortable.

"Did your man in black say anything about Marie Subbarao's killer?" she asked after a moment.

"No. All he really said was to ask where something she took was."

"They obviously don't have it and they appear to think the killer doesn't have it either or they wouldn't target us."

"Right. Did your agent say anything?"

"When I demanded to know who killed Marie, he only said that we'd never be able to catch him."

"Hmph," he snorted. "Clearly they don't know you or they'd know better than to say such a thing. I'd never bet against you."

She smiled a little. "Flatterer."

"It's not flattery. I just know you."

"You know, Castle, for someone who seems to thrive on conspiracy theories, you don't seem nearly excited enough about actually being involved in one."

"I'd be more excited if those injectors hadn't hurt. Also, call me crazy but apparently I don't enjoy being kidnapped." He paused. "Or being separated from you during the kidnapping." She felt him turn his head to press a kiss to her hair. "I'm glad you're okay." It was a simple statement but in his tone, she heard a trace of what she herself had felt in waking up in that dark room and realizing that Castle wasn't there, that they'd been separated.

She reached up to grip the hand that was wrapped around her shoulder. "Yeah," she agreed quietly. "I'm glad too."

Soon after that, they saw approaching headlights and Kate straightened up as the Jersey state police showed up, who assured her that a tow truck would be coming to pick up her car shortly, as she and Castle slid into the back seat for the drive back to Manhattan.

Captain Montgomery was, predictably, angry at the idea that one of his detectives had been illegally detained by government agents who hadn't even identified themselves and Kate walked out of his office assured that Montgomery would be throwing all his influence into finding out who those agents had been.

Esposito walked up as she left, falling into step beside Castle, who had been, of course, waiting for her. He shot both her and Castle teasing smirks. "Abducted by government agents, huh? Come on, what were you two really doing?"

She rolled her eyes. "It's not a hickey, Esposito."

"You both have one."

She stopped and turned to face Esposito. "Yeah, we stopped for a quickie on the Jersey Turnpike in the middle of a case and then I deliberately lied about my car not working so we'd have to call Montgomery for help," she said sarcastically.

Espo had the grace (and the sense of self-preservation) to look chastened.

Castle was (of course) smirking and quite visibly fighting a laugh and she shot him a quelling look. They were in the precinct. Behave, Castle.

"Where are you with the vacuum packers?" she asked pointedly and Esposito immediately switched back into professional mode.

She felt some of the tension and lingering unease over having been detained dissolve as she ensconced herself firmly back into her Detective Beckett persona. She had a murder to solve and she _would_ solve it, mysterious government agents notwithstanding.

* * *

The next evening was the dinner with Ashley's parents so even though Kate rarely took an evening off in the middle of a case, she made an exception for this.

Castle had arranged to have a gourmet meal delivered to the loft so it only needed to be dished up before Ashley's parents arrived and they could sit down to a family style buffet.

Ashley's parents, Bob and Julie Linden, arrived punctually and on seeing them, Kate could immediately understand the inflection of Alexis's voice when she'd said that they were traditional and serious people. Julie Linden was wearing pearls that would not have looked out of place on Julia Child, along with a sweater and slacks that were of clearly good quality and had a conservative elegance that would probably have been appropriate for an audience with the queen. Bob Linden looked rather like a stereotypical professor, so much so that she was almost surprised that he wasn't wearing tweed to complete the look. They were a respectable, even staid, comfortably middle-class couple. They were, in other words, about as far removed from Castle and Martha Rodgers as it was possible to be, although Martha had gone so far as to wear one of the most restrained outfits Kate had yet seen her wear.

Castle shot Kate a look, his eyes widening comically, as the Lindens were greeting Martha, and Kate suppressed a laugh at the dismay she could read in his eyes. He had obviously (and unsurprisingly) taken Bob and Julie's measure as quickly as she had and was even less thrilled over the prospect of an evening spent with them than he had been before.

Kate herself wasn't particularly anticipating the evening but she had the benefit of having been raised in a normal household, remembered dinners with some of her parents' colleagues at work who were equally old-school and required formal manners.

Castle introduced Kate to the Lindens as his partner and Kate saw the quickly-suppressed curiosity about what the word meant since it could encompass a fair range of relationships, but any questions over her and Castle's relationship which Bob and Julie might have had were immediately forgotten in the reaction to the news that she was a homicide detective.

"Oh. Well, how… interesting," Julie murmured rather faintly.

Kate had encountered such reactions before when people learned about her occupation. She found it amusing and had to tamp down on the mischievous impulse to make some sort of quip about liking to carry a gun and shoot things or something like that in order to see the horror on their faces. (She might have been spending too much time with Castle. Or more accurately perhaps, spending time with Castle had brought out the mischievous side of her that had been so long suppressed.) Instead, she responded with an anodyne sentiment about how worthwhile it was to serve and protect the public and saw both of the Lindens relax a little as they smiled in approval and agreement.

It was for Alexis's sake, she reminded herself.

With that in mind, she engaged Julie in friendly conversation by praising Ashley and his good manners, aware that Castle and Martha were making a valiant attempt to draw Bob out with Martha asking about his teaching experiences.

In such mild, polite small talk, they made it through the initial introduction period and Kate thought that by the time they sat down to dinner, both Bob and Julie had relaxed and were even beginning to enjoy themselves. Even Bob, she figured, could not be entirely immune to the combined social charm of Castle and Martha. They were both, she noted, on their best behavior. And Castle was, of course, an experienced host, albeit the events he was accustomed to hosting were usually much louder, more boisterous affairs. Castle was wearing his publicity smile, his not-inconsiderable charisma on display although it was somewhat subdued to be appropriate to the private setting.

And even though Castle was naturally focusing on Bob and Julie and paying very little attention to Kate herself, she was aware of the little flutter inside her, the tug of (silly) attraction to his charming smile that occasionally broke through the polite attention with which he was listening to Bob and Julie's conversation.

One would really have thought that being in a relationship with Castle would have rendered her immune to Castle's somewhat impersonal publicity smile but no, she wasn't immune. If anything, she might have become more susceptible than ever to his charm. She made a mental note not to mention this to him; he was already quite smug enough.

At no point, she noted with an inward flicker of amusement, did Castle actually resort to his pre-prepared question about deficit spending.

They were nearly through dinner when Kate was abruptly distracted by her phone buzzing in her pocket. She might be taking the evening off but she'd told both the boys and Lanie to keep her posted on anything that might come up, as she usually did.

Glancing around, she pulled her phone out of her pocket to check it as subtly as she could manage.

It was a text message from Lanie. _Results of M Subbarao's bloodwork came back. Sodium pentothal in her system._

Kate frowned. Sodium pentothal—truth serum? Why would—

Dinner with Ashley's parents, she reminded herself, yanking herself from her thoughts related to the case to hear Castle addressing Bob Linden, "Alexis mentioned to me that you recently finished a book. What is it about?"

Mr. Linden leaned forward, clearly in his element now that he was being asked about his work. "Well, my primary interests lie in market aggregation, risk sharing, and pareto optimality. Most aggregation theorems try to prove that if the individual utility function is of a certain form, and with a certain amount of heterogeneity in preferences or wealth, the social welfare function equals utility function over aggregates has a certain form, usually the same.* In this book, I decided to take a bold new look at the linear aggregation of markets."

Kate could tell from Castle's expression that he hadn't understood a word of what Mr. Linden had just said. For that matter, neither had she, in spite of her course on Economic Theory. But, of course, complete incomprehension could not defeat Castle's well-honed social instincts so he responded smoothly, with commendable seriousness, "It's about time someone did."

If ever an economics professor could be said to preen, Mr. Linden rather did. She guessed that he didn't often receive such an apparently admiring response from lay people when he spoke about his work in economics. He almost smiled as he said, "So Ashley tells me you're an author as well. Tell me about your writing, Mr. Castle. I don't read popular fiction. I find most of it crass and tawdry."

And there went the good feelings.

Kate glanced at Castle, with some sympathy. She knew how seriously he took his writing, for all that he clowned around about it and pretended it was mostly like play to him. Knew very well that the way he tended to ham it up and react with histrionic outrage at any criticism of his writing and his own bragging was his usual defense mechanism to mask what his writing was to him.

She slid one hand under the table, reaching over to touch his knee lightly.

He didn't look at her or otherwise react but she knew he understood the touch for the gesture of support it was as he straightened up. "Yes. Right. Well, I…" he paused, visibly gathering his thoughts, "I think of my writing as character studies into human behavior, looking into the heart of what makes people tick," he began.

Kate felt a flicker of entirely unbidden and rather irrational excitement, a fleeting feeling of unreality breaking in on her. This was Richard Castle, _the_ Richard Castle, the author whose books she'd been reading for years. She was listening to her favorite living author talk about his view of his own books. In some corner of her mind, she heard his amused voice saying, _You really are a fan, aren't you?_ Yes, she really was…

Castle went on with more confidence. "For instance, what would make an ordinary person like yourself commit an act that's unusually heinous or somehow out of…" He trailed off, an arrested expression on his face. Oh, she knew that look. He'd had a thought related to the case. "Character," he finished absently.

He broke off and addressed the Lindens with one of his publicity smiles. "Would you excuse us for a moment?"

The Lindens were staring at him as if he had just shown that he was a creature from another planet but Castle apparently took their silence as agreement and pushed his chair away from the table, grasping her hand as he did so. "Kate, can I speak with you a minute?" he asked for the benefit of the table.

Kate managed a smile for the Lindens and threw Martha a look. "Excuse us, please."

Castle half-tugged her away from the dining room, stopping just beside the bookshelves lining the walls of his office, apparently deciding that actually going out of sight would be a step too far. He turned to her, his eyes bright with discovery. "Marie was acting out of character. What self-respecting espionage agent would act strangely and risk blowing her cover?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

He was right, Kate realized with her own excitement rising to meet his.

"Maybe she wasn't the real spy," he suggested.

"That would explain the test results that Lanie just texted me about. Marie had traces of sodium pentothal in her system."

"Somebody gave her truth serum? Maybe it was the real spy!" he exclaimed, forgetting in this excitement to keep his voice low and speaking in his normal volume as he caught her hand in his excitement. "That explains the white room, the questions—that's why Stryker thought she was abducted by aliens."

"And if Marie wasn't the spy…" she began.

"Then the real spy is someone with access to that radio telescope at the Science Center," he finished the sentence for her.

"And the real spy must be the killer," she capped the sentence, smiling at him and squeezing his hand.

"We need to go to the Science Center," they said at the same time and Kate met his beaming grin with a rather silly grin of her own, feeling the sense of closeness she always felt in these moments when their minds were on the same wavelength. Other couples might bond over romantic dinners or going dancing or to a show but she and Castle bonded over solving murders, over mysteries. It was strange but it worked for them.

And then they turned in near-perfect unison to face the dining table. Oh, right. Kate had a sudden memory of that disastrous evening at Drago earlier this year, the way she and Castle had both left their dates in the restaurant when they'd realized the truth about the pet store owner. They couldn't leave without a word this time.

"Ah…" Castle hesitated.

Kate stepped forward, releasing Castle's hand, and addressing the Lindens with her most smoothly professional smile and voice, one she would use if she were addressing the higher-ups at One Police Plaza. "We're so sorry but we've just realized that we need to leave. Normally, we wouldn't but I'm afraid that the current case we're working is highly time-sensitive and related to national security so we really must go. Martha is a wonderful hostess in her own right, so please don't feel you need to cut the evening short."

"Yes, please, stay as long as you like," Castle chimed in. "We do have dessert prepared and I'm sure my mother will be happy to get to know you both better. Mother?" he addressed Martha.

"Oh, of course, Richard, Katherine," Martha answered, as she had to, really.

Kate bent and gave Martha a quick kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, Martha. We're so sorry about this, really." She turned to the Lindens. "It was very nice to meet you."

"Ah, nice to meet you too," Mr. Linden responded rather by rote.

Castle threw the Lindens his best publicity smile. "This was such a pleasure. I'm so glad we were able to meet, even if I do need to leave early."

The social niceties out of the way, she and Castle were hurrying out of the loft in a minute, Castle stopping only to grab a coat from the front hall closet while Kate stopped in his office to retrieve her gun.

Their eyes met the moment they were in the elevator and abruptly they both burst out laughing until Castle had to lean against the elevator wall to hold himself up and she clutched at his arm.

They were still laughing when the elevator stopped. Kate had no doubt that they probably looked either drunk or crazy to the doorman but he didn't blink an eye, either too well-trained or too familiar with Castle to think anything he did very strange.

"I am so glad you thought of what you did," she gasped as they made their way to her replacement car.

"Me too," he agreed, almost wheezing for breath. "I was on the point of trying to invent a disaster to get out of that dinner."

"You weren't thrilled to learn more about the linear aggregation of markets?" she teased.

"You didn't understand a word of what he said either, Beckett," he retorted. "Admit it."

"I never claimed to be an economist."

"Thank goodness for that. Oh god, I thought my brain was going to start leaking out my ears from the boredom," he laughed.

"That would have made the evening more fun."

He made a face at her. "You were great when you were making our excuses. I've never heard you sound so official."

She laughed. "I pretended I was talking to the Police Commissioner or someone else at One PP."

"It worked. If they don't take offense at our leaving early, it'll be because of you."

Oh god. Alexis.

She winced a little. "I hope they don't take offense. Alexis will be upset."

He let his head fall back against the car seat. "Oh. Right. She'll understand that a breakthrough in the case had to take precedence, right?" He sounded more hopeful than confident.

Kate sighed a little. Normally, Alexis probably would but she was a teenage girl in love for the first time, so she wasn't sure Alexis's normal maturity was fully in control right now. She just hoped that Ashley's parents didn't decide to blame Alexis for any disapproval they felt for Castle or for her. But she didn't say that. All she said was, "She's a smart, sensible girl."

"Yeah, she is," he said in the same soft, proud tone that he tended to use whenever anyone praised Alexis in his hearing.

She was beginning to feel a little guilty for her and Castle's rather unkind assessment of the Lindens. "Ashley's parents were very nice," she noted charitably.

He looked at her. "I know. They seemed like good people, just…" He trailed off and grimaced.

"A little boring," she finished rather guiltily and they exchanged looks and rueful little laughs. "We're terrible, aren't we?"

"Me more than you, I think, Beckett." He made a face, a shadow from some memory momentarily dimming his expression. "I don't tend to get along well with respectable, traditional people."

"I'm sorry, Castle," she said quietly, responding to his tone and his expression more than his words.

He almost visibly shook off whatever memories he'd been thinking about and shot her a grin. "Nah, it's okay, Beckett. It stopped mattering a long time ago. Turns out no one cares about your family background when you're really rich."

He was evading. She tucked the questions into the back of her mind. She wouldn't push. She, of all people, understood how hard it could be to open up about the past.

And at the moment, they did have a case to solve.

* * *

Later that night, Kate shook Agent Westfield's hand before he walked off and then turned to join Castle, still on the phone.

"I love you too," she heard Castle say. "Bye."

Ah, Castle must be talking to Alexis. She hoped Alexis wasn't too upset about the dinner.

Getting off the phone, Castle turned to her. "So what did he tell you?" he asked immediately. Such a curious child sometimes.

Kate suppressed a smirk. "He told me something in confidence," she prevaricated. Agent Westfield hadn't, actually, said anything particularly interesting, only thanked her again for her help and cooperation and apologized, rather obliquely, for detaining her and Castle. He had also noted that he would mention her name to his superiors if she was ever interested in working for his Agency—which he identified as being the CIA, only saying specifically not to mention it to Castle or anyone else as the CIA wasn't supposed to be involved or interfere with local law enforcement's investigation of crimes that had happened on domestic soil but had made an exception in order to capture Ung Kyu.

"What?

I wish I could tell you, Castle, but it was… classified." Kate sternly controlled her expression and her tone. She supposed she was being a little mean since she knew it drove Castle nuts not to be included but it was such fun to tease him. And even without Agent Westfield's injunction to secrecy, she wouldn't mention the CIA to Castle; if he knew, Castle's tendency to spout CIA conspiracy theories would only skyrocket and Kate, frankly, didn't really want to deal with that.

"What did he tell you that was classified? Was it about aliens? The truth about UFOs?" he guessed eagerly. "Are you gonna tell me or just gonna make me keep guessing?" he asked, a touch of petulance entering his tone.

"I don't know," she said airily. "This guessing thing is kind of fun."

"All right. Was it about what happened at Roswell?"

"No."

"Area 51?"

"No."

"The Loch Ness monster is real?"

Kate bit back a laugh. She should have known Castle would bring up the Loch Ness monster. He had already favored her not that long ago with a long explanation of why "Nessie" could be real. "Yeah," she quipped sarcastically.

"Really?" he asked gleefully.

It was official. She was dating the world's biggest geek and a perennial 12-year-old. "No."

He gave a disappointed sigh. "You had me." But of course, being Castle, he wasn't discouraged for long. "They're controlling the weather?" he suggested.

"No."

"Our thoughts?"

"No." Really, Castle? Mind control? These were government agents, not Jedi knights.

"Our buying habits?"

Now he wasn't even really trying. And she thought it was time to change the subject, as fun as this guessing game was. "No. Now tell me, what did Alexis have to say about the dinner?"

"Well, the good news is that Ashley's parents didn't take offense."

She smiled, feeling a little knot of anxiety unwind. She'd been worried about that. "Oh good. I still think I'm going to call Alexis and apologize though."

"That was the good news. The bad news is that apparently, Ashley's parents have decided that I am—and I quote—fascinating, so much so that they now want to come with me, Alexis, and Ashley when we go camping."

She let out a rueful laugh. "Oh, dear. I imagine you're not really looking forward to that."

"Oh I can't wait," he deadpanned. "I've always wanted to go hiking while listening to a lecture on the linear aggregation of markets."

She choked on a laugh. "I'm sure he won't talk about economics while you're hiking."

"Let's hope you're right, Beckett. Or I might be driven to jump into a gorge just to escape."

She laughed. "Remind me to tell Alexis to keep an extra-close eye on you while you're on this trip, make sure you come back in one piece."

"Oh, I'll come back, Beckett."

"You'd better," she said with mock severity.

He laughed and leaned over sideways to kiss her hair quickly. "You ought to know by now that I can't stay away from you."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," she retorted teasingly.

"I'm still deciding if it is or not," he shot back in an exaggeratedly ponderous tone.

She smirked and elbowed him in the side, making him yelp and jump. Such a drama queen. Especially since he was still wearing his Writer vest.

"Hey, keep your pointy elbows to yourself, Beckett," he complained, giving her a look of mock petulance.

She only grinned and slipped her arm into his. It was an unusual gesture for her, especially when they had just been working, but no one else was around as they walked back to where she'd left her car and she was aware of a rush of affection, of happiness, welling up inside her.

And it didn't matter that she knew she had another hour or two of paperwork to get through back at the precinct or that the temperature had dropped to make her start to feel the chill, now that the adrenaline of going in after Dr. Vaughn had worn off. She was just happy with Castle and somehow, the thought felt significant. Happy to tease him and give him a hard time, happy just talking to him.

He really was her best friend in so many ways, the person whose company she enjoyed the most. It was a realization that had come gradually over the course of the last year of working with him and it was, in part, the fear that starting a real relationship with Castle would cause the end of their friendship that had made her resist her feelings for him for so long. Now, after six months of being with him in every way, she knew that their friendship hadn't ended or been made awkward. It had deepened, taken on new dimensions, but at base, they were still best friends. And that was a reassuring thing.

She suddenly remembered something her mom had said to her once the summer before she'd died, in talking about relationships and why it mattered that her parents had been colleagues and friends first before they had fallen in love. That it was always easy to love and be in love when things were going well, in the first euphoric flush of a new relationship, but that the real test was in the bad times and in the mundane little annoyances of real life. Love without friendship was like a kite, that could fly only as long as the winds and weather conditions were favorable. Friendship was what gave love wings, allowing it to fly on its own power, without being subject to the changing winds.

She and Castle had love, built on a solid foundation of friendship, and she was suddenly sure that they were going to last. He'd promised _always_ and at that moment, she really believed it.

 _~To be continued…~_

* * *

 _*_ I am not an economist so I have no idea if the economics sentences make any sense but they are a close paraphrase of something found on the website of John Cochrane, an economist at the University of Chicago, whose page was the first one to come up in the results from a search on the linear aggregation of markets.

A/N 2: I am taking the name of Ashley's father from IMDB and inventing a first name for Ashley's mom who's never identified.

Thank you, everyone, for reading. I appreciate all reviews, follows, and favorites.


	8. Chapter 7: Last Call

Author's Note: Another fluffy chapter as it's a post-ep for 3x10 "Last Call" and also utilizing some dialogue from 5x10 "Significant Others" because I couldn't resist. (I didn't write about it but in my head, I'm sure that Castle and Beckett had some fun the next night after Beckett's little trick with the cherry in that great first scene in the Old Haunt.)

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 7_

Kate wasn't drunk.

She was just pleasantly tipsy, having drunk enough to make her body feel warm and loose.

She had, at any rate, drunk too much to make it safe for her to drive—not that it mattered since her car was back at the precinct since she, Castle, the boys, and Captain Montgomery had piled into two cabs to get to the Old Haunt.

Captain Montgomery had only stayed for about an hour, having one drink with them, before he had left to go home to Evelyn and his kids. Left to their own devices, they had had another round of drinks before she and Castle had teamed up against Esposito and Ryan to play pool—she and Castle had won. And then, the competition having made them all a little thirsty, they'd had another drink.

She leaned into Castle's warm side as they watched the cab Espo was taking nose its way back into the traffic while Castle raised his arm to flag down another cab. The boys were like the brothers she'd never had but she had to admit that she was glad they were gone now, leaving her and Castle alone—well, alone in a matter of speaking since they were standing on the sidewalk. She'd kept a distance between her and Castle during the evening the way she always did in the precinct but she'd wanted to be alone with him all night.

A cab pulled up and she and Castle slid inside as she directed the driver to the loft.

Once settled, Kate snuggled in under Castle's arm. It was a rather uncharacteristic position for her but she'd been fighting the urge to hug him—and more—all night long. She kind of loved that he'd bought the Old Haunt. It was just the sort of impulsive, grand gesture that was so very like him and for now, she didn't stop to marvel at how rich he was to be able to buy an entire bar on impulse. She just loved that he cared enough about preserving its history and its tradition to buy it. "You really wrote almost all of your first book in the Old Haunt?"

"Yeah. I like places like that, so much history in everything, thinking about all that it witnessed. And I liked to pretend that all the other great writers who had visited the Old Haunt over the years were sort of cheering me on, inspiring me."

"It wasn't too distracting?"

"It was mostly background noise and early on, I sought out places where I could sort of people-watch; it helped keep me from getting too bogged down in my head, helped give my dialogue a more realistic feel."

She couldn't help but smile, feeling a flutter of excitement inside her. Oh, she loved it when he gave her these glimpses into his writing process. She couldn't get over it sometimes, that he still found watching her work to be so fascinating, even after all this time, but when she thought about how she felt when he talked about his writing, she could understand it a little. "When did you start doing your writing in your office?"

"Oh, I had to learn to write at home once Alexis came along."

"Mm. So along with the Old Haunt, where were your other favorite writing spots? Wait, let me guess, the New York Public Library?"

"Of course the Library was one of them." He paused and then he added, with a slight change in tone, "And that rooftop where I met with Kyra during that case about her bridesmaid."

"Oh," was all she said, rather lamely. The rooftop where he had kissed Kyra. She hadn't realized, or hadn't thought, that he and Kyra had picked that place for a reason but she supposed it made sense. The nostalgia brought on by the place, to say nothing of the person—no wonder he and Kyra had kissed. She didn't know why she was reacting like this; it was stupid, really it was. She and Castle hadn't even been together, or anywhere close to it, back then. And Kyra was happily married now. But she found she still didn't like the mental images of the pictures from that night, the pictures not just of Castle kissing Kyra but the way he had looked at Kyra, the way he had held her. As irrational as it was, a small corner of her didn't like the reminder that Castle had been in love before.

"And coffee shops all over the city," he added quickly. "I spent a lot of time in different coffee shops. That was how I discovered our coffee place, realized it made some of the best coffee I've ever had so when I started to get coffee for you, I figured only the best would do."

She smiled, suddenly feeling silly. It _was_ silly to be so bothered by a past relationship. Whatever Castle had felt for Kyra, he loved _her_ now. She turned her face up to kiss his chin. "Good answer."

He looked down at her and brushed his lips against hers. "Well, I know how you love your coffee."

At that moment, the taxi pulled up outside the loft. Finally. They could be alone now. It was late enough, being well after midnight, that Alexis would be in bed, as would Martha. She was aware of the impatience thrumming through her, the _want_ she had been trying to ignore and push back for the past few hours.

Castle had shrugged off his coat and his jacket once they were inside the Old Haunt, which was quite distracting enough since she loved the way his chest and his shoulders filled out his shirts but then once they'd started playing pool, he'd rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and, well, her ability to concentrate on anything aside from him had been severely tested. Watching the play of muscles as he bent over the pool table to take his shots, to say nothing of the view of his butt, had made her mouth go dry.

If she had ever thought that actually being with Castle would make her want him less, that she might be able to get this lust out of her system, it seemed like every day, every night she spent with him, demonstrated ever more strongly that there was no getting over wanting him.

She'd been patient, she had been. She'd refrained from crawling right into his lap on the cab ride back to the loft and had deliberately kept up a conversation to distract herself. So really, it wasn't all that surprising that the moment the elevator door slid closed, Kate's patience snapped.

She pushed him back against the wall and kissed him long and hard, her hands sliding under his jacket and roaming over him greedily.

"Beckett," he gasped when her lips left his to scatter kisses along the line of his jaw and then further to press her face against his clavicle, the little hollow of his throat that had been taunting her—or so it seemed—all night. She wasn't sure why but she loved this spot on his throat. His habit of leaving the top buttons of his shirts undone was both wonderful and horrible for that very reason. "You—" he broke off on a groan as she nipped teasingly at his Adam's apple, before he went on, "you get horny when you've been drinking."

She drew back just far enough to smirk at him. "It's not from the drinking," she informed him breathlessly. "It was watching you play pool."

His eyes darkened even more and then he was turning them around so her back was against the wall as he leaned in to kiss her again, his hips rocking into hers. "The feeling's mutual," he husked against her ear, pausing to nip her earlobe. "Watching you play pool was one of the hottest things I've ever seen. The way you handled the pool cue. The way you bent over the pool table."

She gasped and then moaned a little, fresh heat erupting low in her belly from his words, his tone. She'd never been so affected by words or the mere sound of someone's voice. She could trade innuendo with the best of them but her enjoyment of it was limited to enjoying the challenge to her wits and her brain, plus her sense of humor. It was easier, too, to engage in flirtation and innuendo when she was unaffected by it herself, never needed to worry about losing her train of thought from a physical reaction. Until Castle. And as with so much else, he was different. His words, his voice, never failed to affect her.

She tangled her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth back to hers, kissing him hotly, her tongue tangling with his, and then briefly catching his lower lip between her teeth in that way that always made him groan, his hands tightening on her back.

The sound of the elevator chiming made them break apart, both breathing hard, lips swollen.

Castle bit back another groan at the sight of Kate. She was flushed and breathless, her lips swollen and pinker than usual, and her eyes had gone dark with lust, the way they always did, and he decided for about the millionth time that there was absolutely nothing in the world hotter than the sight of Kate Beckett when she had been thoroughly kissed.

She crowded in against him as he fumbled impatiently with his keys, attempting to unlock the door of the loft with hands made clumsy with lust. Her evil hands explored his chest and his stomach and then wandered lower until he had to grab her wrists with his one free hand. "Beckett, if you keep that up, I'll never get the door open," he managed to choke out.

She made a show of removing her hands from him but then gave him a provocative look through her lashes that effectively ensured that his arousal didn't wane in the slightest.

But he finally—amazingly—managed to unlock the door and then he was impatiently shoving his keys back in his pocket and reaching for her, tugging her against him.

They half-stumbled into the loft, kissing greedily, hands clutching at each other.

"Well, this is interesting."

The coolly-amused tone broke over Castle with all the efficacy of a bucketful of ice water. He knew that voice, quite possibly the last voice in the world he wanted to hear.

Kate jerked away from him as they broke apart and stared in what he guessed was equal shock and dismay at the red-headed woman lounging on his couch, a smirk playing on her lips, while Alexis sat in the armchair looking mortified beyond belief, unable to meet Castle's eyes.

Castle felt—irritatingly—some heat in his cheeks because he and Kate had tried so hard not to let Alexis see anything inappropriate and while their hands hadn't been anywhere indecent—thank God—they had still been kissing and touching more passionately than they ever would have if they'd had the slightest idea that Alexis would still be awake and downstairs.

Yet another thing to cast up to Meredith's account.

"Meredith," he said flatly. "What the—" he broke off before he could swear in front of Alexis and forcibly moderated his tone although it was beyond him to sound even remotely welcoming, "what are you doing here?"

Meredith gave him one of her bright, self-satisfied smiles. "I came to see Alexis, of course, since I wasn't able to be here for her last birthday. Her sweet 16 so of course I needed to come and celebrate it with her." She aimed a rather saccharine smile at Alexis. "We are just going to have the best mother-daughter day out tomorrow. Isn't that right, Alexis darling?"

Only long experience with the ways of Meredith kept Castle from snorting. Meredith only remembered Alexis's birthday when it suited her to do so, which was about half the time. He looked at Alexis, who forced a rather wan smile. He knew precisely how much Alexis enjoyed spending time with Meredith but as always, his heart pinched in his chest at the evidence of it.

Castle glanced back at Kate rather helplessly to see that she had her poker face on, a meaningless and utterly fake polite smile on her lips. "Kate, you remember Meredith."

Kate shot him a look that he couldn't read before she gave Meredith a forced smile. "Of course. Nice to see you again, Meredith. How was your flight?"

Damn, he loved this woman, marveling at her composure as she greeted his ex-wife with a courtesy that he guessed only he and Jim Beckett and possibly Captain Montgomery could have identified as being false.

Meredith made some bland response to Kate while Castle turned to Alexis. "You couldn't have given me some warning when she showed up?" he asked quietly.

"I sent you a couple text messages when she arrived," Alexis whispered defensively. "Didn't you check your phone?"

Oh. Castle grimaced. He hadn't checked his phone in the last couple hours. His phone was in his jacket pocket and he'd taken off his jacket when they arrived at the Old Haunt so he hadn't felt the buzzing from his phone either. "I forgot to check my phone," he explained, as he bent to kiss Alexis's forehead. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," he murmured, a blanket apology both for seeming to reproach her and more importantly, the regret he always felt when faced with the stark truth that he could not give Alexis the mother she deserved.

Alexis managed a small, faint smile. "It's okay, Dad. I feel bad for Kate though."

Castle glanced back at Kate, who was gamely exchanging small talk with Meredith. "Kate can take care of herself," he assured Alexis. Truer words had never been spoken but that didn't mean Kate should have to deal with Meredith. But he didn't want Alexis worrying about it either. He chucked her chin lightly with his knuckles, a teasing gesture that brought a smile to her lips and cleared the lingering shadows from her eyes. "Kate and I will be fine." He bit back the words that Meredith wouldn't be around long. It was true but he hardly wanted to emphasize the fact that Meredith never stuck around for any length of time, even if he knew Alexis knew it.

He touched his hand to Alexis's shoulder and went back to slip his hand into Kate's, a deliberate gesture. "Meredith, if you'd sent word that you were coming, I would have tried to be home earlier."

Meredith fluttered her hand in the air. "Why spoil the surprise for Alexis? Alexis told me that you and Detective Beckett were finishing up work on a murder mystery."

Castle gritted his teeth a little. He knew Meredith hadn't really intended to make it sound like the cases he and Kate worked on were as fictional as his books—it was just Meredith's usual airy way of talking about pretty much everything—but it got under his skin. Odd to remember that at first, Meredith's casual manner had been something he liked since he, after all, made light of things too. More fool he that he hadn't realized until far too late that Meredith's insouciance was entirely sincere; she honestly didn't care much about anything that didn't affect her and her career whereas his habit of making light of things was mostly an act, a defense mechanism.

"It's late, Meredith, and we've had a long day. As pleasant a surprise as your visit is," he added, keeping as much sarcasm out of his voice as he could, "shouldn't you be leaving for your hotel?" he asked, more out of hope than a real belief that she would have booked a room at a hotel.

Meredith gave a ringing little laugh. "Don't be silly, Richard. When I'm here to spend time with my dear daughter, why would I stay anywhere but here? My things are already upstairs."

Beside him, he felt Kate stiffen slightly.

Damn it. This was his fault, he knew that. He should have put his foot down long before, made it clear that while he wasn't going to prevent Meredith from seeing Alexis, Meredith wasn't welcome to stay with them either. And he should never have been stupid enough to fall back into bed with Meredith after their divorce and definitely not the last time she'd been in the City a year and half ago.

He opened his mouth to make it clear that, even if he could hardly kick her out tonight, Meredith would need to make other arrangements for the rest of her stay, but before he could, Meredith went on, addressing Kate. "Detective Beckett, I've heard so much about you from Alexis and I know you've been seeing a lot of Alexis so I've decided I simply must get to know you better, and not just as Nikki Heat from Richard's books. Alexis and I will be spending the day together tomorrow but maybe you and I could go out for a drink after dinner tomorrow?"

Wait, what? Castle's gaze bounced between Meredith and Kate. He discarded immediately any notion that Meredith wanted to get to know Kate better for Alexis's sake; Meredith had never shown the slightest interest in getting to know Alexis's friends or her teachers or anyone else in Alexis's life. He also didn't believe for a moment that Meredith had actually read the Nikki Heat books. Meredith hadn't bothered to read the books he'd written while they were married nor had she, to the best of his knowledge, ever read any of the Derrick Storm books. Meredith rarely read anything other than magazines and scripts for roles anyway. Meredith's interest in his books was limited to the money they brought in.

Kate looked surprised. He couldn't imagine that Kate had any interest in getting to know Meredith better so he fully expected her to demur and make some excuse but instead she managed a small smile and said, "That sounds nice. How about 8 tomorrow?"

Castle kept himself from gaping at Kate only by locking his jaw. She was agreeing to have drinks with Meredith?

"That would be great," Meredith simpered before transferring her smile to him. "Well, I am tired from travelling so I'll go up and get my beauty sleep. See you in the morning. Good night, kitten."

He shut his eyes but before he could sink under the weight of mortification and rising irritation, he heard Alexis speak up quickly. "I'm going to go to bed too. Good night, Dad. Night, Kate."

He bent to accept Alexis's kiss on the cheek and then watched as Alexis, after glancing at Meredith, gave Kate a quick hug.

"Good night, Alexis," Kate murmured.

Meredith and Alexis went upstairs, leaving him and Kate (finally) alone and he followed Kate silently into his bedroom, closing the door firmly behind him.

"Kate, I'm so sorry about Meredith," he began immediately, the words rushing out of him. "She likes to show up with no warning but I had no idea she would show up now and I forgot to check my phone while we were at the Old Haunt so I didn't see Alexis's text messages warning me about Meredith's arrival."

Kate turned back around to face him after she had slipped off her dad's watch and her necklace with her mom's ring on it, placing them both carefully on the small silver jewelry tray which he'd placed on top of the nightstand on her side of the bed for just that purpose. He was momentarily distracted in imagining the keepsake box he'd given her sitting on the nightstand or on his dresser, a silent declaration that this was her room too the way he wanted it to be.

"I know you didn't know Meredith was coming. Does she usually stay here when she visits, though?"

He sighed and grimaced. "She doesn't come out to the City often but when she does, yes, she generally has, except for the one time she visited while I was married to Gina. As you saw, she just assumes she's welcome and as much as I might not enjoy Meredith's company, I have a hard time saying no to her when she says she's here to spend time with Alexis. Sorry, Kate. I'll tell her tomorrow—or, I guess, later today—that she'll have to get a hotel room for the rest of this visit."

"No, Castle, don't," she responded quickly. "She'll think that I was the one who put you up to it and that'll make it seem like I'm insecure."

He was, not for the first time, amazed at the way her mind worked. She didn't like Meredith staying at the loft but she didn't want Meredith to leave because she didn't want to seem insecure? "And you're not insecure?"

He relaxed a little as she moved around the bed to stand in front of him. "Not when it comes to Meredith," she confirmed quietly. But she didn't deny that she was insecure when it came to other things, he noted peripherally. It didn't surprise him. This was Kate and she had been hurt too much, spent so many years seeing the worst that people can do to one another, to trust easily or too whole-heartedly. She was a skeptic, always quick to doubt, and he knew that she had some deep-seated insecurities, usually kept well-hidden behind her protective shield, her wall.

"But," she went on giving him a faint smile, "that doesn't mean that I like having Meredith stay here, in the room that used to be mine." She paused, making an adorably sheepish face. "Sorry, I know I'm being silly. It's the guest room and I had no problems with Alexis's friend Gracie staying in it but Meredith—"

"It's not silly," he interrupted her gently. "You don't like having a woman I used to have meaningless sex with stay in our home," he finished, trying not to sound like he was holding his breath over having used the words, our home, to refer to the loft. Kate occasionally called the loft "home" but he knew that part of it was ease because the word was shorter than always having to refer to the loft as such. It was the "our" he wasn't quite sure of because, as much as he wanted it to be true, the loft wasn't _their_ home—not yet at least.

She ducked her head in that way she had when she was flustered but not before he'd seen her bite her lip. "Yes," she admitted rather reluctantly.

"I'll tell Meredith that she can't use the loft as her own personal hotel anymore," he promised. And he would damn well have to make sure that for once Meredith listened.

"Good."

"Kate, why did you agree to have drinks with Meredith?" he blurted out, not quite able to hold back the question any longer. "You know you don't have to. Meredith is, well, kinda crazy and overly dramatic and you don't have to subject yourself to that."

She gave him a rather incredulous look. "You don't actually think that I'm going to be scared away from having a drink with your ex-wife?"

"No! That's not—that wasn't what I meant," he corrected himself hastily. He felt off-balance, uncertain of his ground having to deal with both his troublesome ex-wife and his girlfriend at the same time. Damn Meredith anyway. He and Kate had been having such a good night until Meredith had shown up. "I just meant, you don't actually want to go out for drinks with Meredith, do you, and I don't want you to feel like you have to do anything you don't want to."

Kate smirked at him. "What, you're not afraid, are you, Castle? It's just two women you've been intimate with going out to talk… compare notes…"

He choked. "What?"

She laughed out loud at his expression that must have looked rather like the proverbial deer in headlights and then apparently took pity on him, moving closer and sliding her arms up around his neck. "Don't look like that, Castle," she told him, brushing a quick kiss against his lips. "I remember everything you've said about Meredith and I'm hardly going to let her come between us."

He relaxed, sliding his hands around her waist, tugging her closer against him. "Promise?"

"I promise, Rick."

As always, the sound of her saying his first name made his heart warm. He bent and brushed his lips against her temple, her cheek, the little hollow right before her ear. "I'm sorry Meredith showing up ruined our night, Kate."

He sensed rather than saw her slight smile and then he definitely felt the way she arched, pressing her hips against him so he couldn't quite help but gasp, his body reacting as always to her closeness. "Night's not quite over yet," she murmured huskily, her voice lowering, dropping into that unbelievably sexy tone of voice that always sent lust streaking through his body. "Care to start back up where we were before we were so rudely interrupted?"

He made a sound that was half a laugh and half a groan. "I love the way you think," he told her just before lowering his lips to hers and that was the last coherent word either of them said for the rest of the night.

* * *

Kate wasn't quite sure exactly what she'd expected from going out for a drink with Meredith but she definitely hadn't expected to enjoy herself.

And yet, she found she was having fun. It was hard not to enjoy herself. Kate didn't know how good an actress Meredith actually was but she had enough of a sense of drama and a sense of humor that she was able to tell stories well and Kate couldn't help but be interested in the stories Meredith told of Castle when Alexis had been a baby.

They were amusing, even hilarious, and some sweet stories about Castle as a young father. One story that almost had Kate spitting out her drink involved Castle's adventures as he attempted to figure out how to change Alexis's diapers and the faces he made as he threw out the dirty ones. And there were others, about how Castle would hang over the cradle watching Alexis sleep with a fascination that never waned. About Castle wandering around the loft, unshaven and in ragged sweats and a sweatshirt, franticly trying to soothe a crying Alexis. About Castle going all out to prepare a special dinner for Meredith, with candles and flowers and all, only to fall asleep over the food almost the moment he and Meredith had sat down to eat.

She learned that Castle had bought the loft shortly after Alexis was born, wanting to give her a stable, permanent home such as he had never had, which gave Kate some indication of how much money Castle had already made from his books and that, however freely he might have spent his money, he hadn't been quite as irresponsible about it as he sometimes made it sound, to have enough money put by in order to buy a place like the loft. She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised; from various things Castle and Martha occasionally let slip and from what she could imagine, Castle had grown up accustomed to fluctuations in income depending on Martha's current acting situation. After that, it was no wonder that Castle, once he started making money on his own, would have made an effort to save and invest his money to ensure a steady stream of income that wasn't entirely dependent on the continued success of his books or his publishing schedule.

It all painted a vivid picture of Castle as a young man who'd known nothing about fatherhood or babies but who had found himself completely helpless with love from the second he'd laid eyes on his baby girl in the hospital. Castle, before he had become comfortable with being a father.

So, yes, Meredith told a good story and in spite of herself, Kate found it nearly impossible to dislike the woman after listening to her talk and laughing at her stories. Meredith might be—she undoubtedly was—flighty and self-centered but she also exerted a certain amount of charm stemming from her vibrancy, her vivid expressions. And Kate had to admit that it was hard to dislike a woman who was such a source for stories about Castle, years before Kate had ever met him.

But Kate couldn't help but notice that Meredith's stories never involved Meredith herself taking an active part in taking care of baby Alexis, being interspersed with comments about Meredith was returning to the loft after a day of auditions or Meredith trying to memorize lines from a script. It was evidence of just how uninvolved a mother Meredith had been from the beginning and gave Kate some sense of how hard it must have been for Castle, coping with the demands of a young baby with no support or help from his wife and trying to do his best by his wife.

Meredith laughed as she finished telling another story involving Castle rolling around on the floor as he played with Alexis as a toddler. "Richard loved it even more than Alexis did, I think," she said before she finished up her drink.

Kate smiled. "He still loves playing around more than Alexis does." She hesitated, not quite able she was actually thinking about asking this but she couldn't deny her curiosity. "Meredith, can I ask, why didn't it work out with you and Rick?" She didn't expect Meredith would admit to cheating because in her experience, the unfaithful party in a divorce almost never admitted to infidelity as being the root cause of a divorce, but she also knew that there are always two sides to every story and she couldn't help but wonder what Meredith would say.

Meredith tilted her head to one side in a thoughtful pose that had Kate wondering if she practiced the move in front of a mirror before she momentarily chided herself for being petty and mean in her thoughts. "Being married to Richard was… great, like a deliciously sweet soufflé, full of romance and excitement. But eventually I realized that he knew everything about me, all my secrets, my worst fears, enough to write a hundred books, and I didn't know enough about him to write a pamphlet."

Kate stilled, the words resonating inside her mind. It was so… familiar. She, of all people, knew what it was like to be loved by Richard Castle, how romantic and sweet he could be. He was so good at remembering to do the little gestures to make a woman happy, thinking about what he'd said about how he'd bought red roses for Meredith just because he'd had a good day and wanted to make her happy. Just as he bought Kate coffee every day to see her smile.

And she knew, too, how well Castle knew her. She suddenly remembered the way Agent Shaw had said that she'd seen the way Castle observed Kate. He did observe her, read her so well. Enough to write a book—he had literally written entire books about her.

"For example, when I asked him about not knowing who his father is, he would smirk—you know the way he smirks. I mean, soufflés are delicious but sooner or later, they always fall."

Kate managed a faint smile. Yes, she definitely knew Castle's smirk.

"My marriage went one way and that wasn't enough for me." Meredith gave a rather affected little laugh. "Oh, but I'm sure he's not like that now. This is ancient history, almost 15 years ago."

Kate felt a small chill go through her as she realized just how much she'd let her guard down—and that she'd just been about to severely underestimate Meredith. She guessed Meredith had benefited quite a bit her entire life because of people underestimating her, equating flightiness and frivolity with stupidity, except Meredith wasn't stupid. She might not be an intellectual but she had a certain cunning, was street-smart as it were.

And like all clever liars, Meredith had mixed up enough truth with what was false to make the entirety seem all the more convincing. Because there was no doubt that Castle did have a tendency to deflect and use humor to avoid talking about the hard things; Kate was familiar with the habit, recognized it as a defense mechanism. (She reflected rather wryly that there was very little she didn't know about defense mechanisms designed to hide vulnerability; she was, after all, a master of the techniques herself.) And in spite of Castle's use of humor, she also recognized that Castle didn't deflect as much anymore, not with her. He was letting her in, just as she was trying to let him in.

Kate also knew Castle well enough to know that while Castle was trusting, temperamentally inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt, he didn't trust many people deeply, not with his heart or his vulnerabilities. And for someone to overcome his instinctive reticence required persistence and understanding and patience, all of which were characteristics that Kate already could see Meredith didn't have. Kate could imagine all too well that Meredith might have asked Castle about his father or other things in one of her fleeting moments of thinking about someone other than herself but she could also guess that Meredith's actual curiosity would have been fleeting, quickly subsumed by Meredith's usual self-absorption.

But saying that Meredith's marriage with Castle went one way and that not being enough for her—oh, it was clever, Kate couldn't deny that, because from all Kate knew from what Castle had said and more importantly from what Meredith had said tonight, the marriage had very much gone one way. Only it had been one way in that it had been Castle who had given and given, Castle who had taken care of Alexis alone, Castle who had supported Meredith in her lifestyle and in her job while Meredith had flitted around, enjoyed herself, and ultimately betrayed Castle.

Kate forced a light smile. "Of course. It was a long time ago. Sorry for asking."

Meredith fluttered her fingers in the air. "Oh, there's no need to apologize. I'm sure you must have been curious. I know I would be if I were in your shoes. And I admit that I was curious about you after hearing from Alexis about your relationship with Richard and that it was serious."

"Oh. Is that why you're visiting?" Kate asked, trying to sound indifferent to the answer.

"Well, I did want to see Alexis too, of course," Meredith quickly added, "but yes, I wanted to see for myself what you and Richard were like together." She paused and then said with a bright smile, "And I have to say that you two are great together."

Kate managed a smile. "Thank you." As nice as it was to hear, Kate was skeptical enough—and cynical enough—not to accept the words at face value and anyway, Meredith had barely seen Kate and Castle together so she was hardly a reliable source. "This has been fun, Meredith," she continued, "but I do need to work tomorrow so I think we'd better call it a night."

"Oh, of course. And I'm sure Richard's been pacing back and forth, driving himself crazy wondering what we're talking about, for hours now."

Kate couldn't help but laugh as she shrugged on her jacket. "Yes, I'm sure he has been."

She and Meredith made their way outside and Kate flagged down a cab.

"Just watch," Meredith said conspiratorially when they were in the cab, "I bet anything that when we walk in, Richard will be tilting his head and leaning to the left the way he always does when he's nervous."

Kate blinked. "He does that? I hadn't noticed." She felt, again, the quick little flicker of unease go through her, as she had that morning when Meredith had sprinkled a little nutmeg into Castle's coffee. His coffee—of all things, how had Kate not known that Castle occasionally liked nutmeg in his coffee? She knew she was being silly to care so much about such a minor little detail. She knew Castle, knew his heart, knew the sort of man that he was. And yes, she knew his flaws too. She knew him. The fact that he occasionally liked nutmeg in his coffee or that he leaned to the left when he was nervous (how had she not noticed that?), those things were minor details. And she would learn them too, in good time.

"Oh, he does," Meredith assured her laughingly. "Just watch. If we play a trick on him, you'll see it."

Kate couldn't help but laugh. No, she and Meredith were never going to be real friends nor could Kate really say that she particularly liked or trusted Meredith either but to play a prank on Castle? She remembered his expression last night after she'd teased him with the idea that she and Meredith might compare notes—no, she couldn't resist.

They came up with the "plan," such as it was, quickly in the few minutes until they arrived back at the loft.

Kate used her key to open the door to the loft and tried not to feel pleased at being able to demonstrate to Meredith that her relationship with Castle was close enough and settled enough that she had a key to the loft and was speaking before they even walked in. "Castle did that? Meredith, I can't believe you married him."

She looked up to see that Castle was, of course, waiting for them, his eyes already wide with dismay at her words, and yes, he was leaning a little to the left. Hm. She really had never noticed that before, so much for her vaunted observation skills as a detective.

"Kate, what did she tell you?"

Hearing the note of terror in his voice, Kate almost relented but she forcibly controlled her expression. "Castle, you're not the man I thought I knew."

He gaped at her. "What—you know me—I'm the same man you knew—I'm the man you know—" he blurted out.

She would make it up to him soon, she told herself. Kate heard Meredith stifle a laugh and then they both dissolved into laughter.

"You're right," Kate gasped in between laughs, "He does lean to the left."

"Only when he's nervous," Meredith confirmed, laughing. "I told you."

Meredith reached out and gave Kate a quick, rather impersonal hug, which Kate returned. "This was fun, Meredith," Kate said and meant it too, although it still surprised her.

Meredith disappeared upstairs still laughing.

Kate headed into Castle's bedroom, knowing Castle was following her.

"Kate," he pleaded, "what did Meredith tell you? She didn't—you're not—at least tell me we're still okay, Kate."

The real fear and uncertainty in his voice cut through her and she repented trying to tease him. Meredith must bring back all sorts of bad memories for Castle and she suddenly remembered what he'd told her after they got together, that he had wondered sometimes if he was one of those people who weren't cut out for a lasting relationship.

She stepped up close to him, sliding her arms around his waist, feeling him relax into her touch as he always did. "You know something, Rick?" she began quietly. "I think listening to Meredith tonight made me like you more."

A spark of happiness kindled in his eyes, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "It did?"

"Yeah, Castle, it did." She paused, trying to put her thoughts in order, explain herself as she was trying to be better about doing. "I've wondered sometimes what drew you to Meredith in the first place; she sounded so frivolous…"

"I was young and stupid."

She gave him a flicker of a smile. "I still wondered. And I realized tonight that Meredith is a fun, dynamic, hard-to-say-no-to woman. And listening to her stories tonight, it just reminded me of the kind of heart you have, how much you would do for anyone you care about."

Meredith's stories had shown Castle when he'd been a young man desperately trying to be everything—perfect husband and perfect father—at once and learning it all on the go. A young man who had been betrayed by his wife and found it in himself to forgive her, forgive her repeatedly, and who still refused to become a cynic, who still wanted to think the best of people and wanted to help them. A man who had become one of the best fathers Kate had ever seen and had done it all alone.

She met his eyes. "It reminded me why I fell in love with you."

He let out a breath, his eyes softening, filling with so much tenderness, so much love, it made her feel warmed all over, as if the sun had just focused all its light on her. "Kate…"

And then he lowered his lips to hers and in his kiss was all the emotion she'd heard in his voice.

She tightened her arms around his waist and happily lost herself in the pleasure and the passion of his kiss and his touch.

 _~To be continued…~_

A/N 2: Fixing the parts of "Significant Others" that I didn't like, as fun as the episode was, and because in this universe, Kate isn't quite as insecure over her relationship with Castle.

Thank you, everyone, who's read, reviewed, followed, or added this fic to their favorites. I appreciate it all.


	9. Chapter 8: Nikki Heat 1

Author's Note: Another fun one, this time revolving around 3x11, "Nikki Heat," and I decided to split it up into two chapters because the chapter was getting way too long, even by my standards. Lots of familiar dialogue ahead (sorry, but "Nikki Heat" had way too many great lines that I simply had to include). I don't know if I've managed to do justice to a hilarious episode but one can but try.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 8_

Well, that was interesting.

Kate ended her phone call with Captain Montgomery and sat back, feeling a little flutter of undeniable excitement, a little fangirl-y squeal that she would never let anyone hear escaping her.

Natalie Rhodes! She was going to get to not only meet Natalie Rhodes but be shadowed by her, really get to talk to her.

Since it had been publicized that she was the inspiration for Nikki Heat, Kate's life had been complicated in myriad ways, most of which had been irritating, although it had, after more than a year since the official introduction of Nikki Heat to the world, mostly died down. But this—well, this was one complication that Kate was excited about.

Kate mentally shook herself and stood up. She didn't have time to be feeling thrilled over getting to meet Natalie Rhodes in person. Captain Montgomery had, unusually, told her the info about the latest crime scene for their new case after he had told her about his conversation with the Police Commissioner informing about Natalie Rhodes.

She shrugged into her coat and called Castle on her way out of her apartment, already looking forward to what she fully expected would be his gleeful excitement at the prospect of Natalie Rhodes playing Nikki Heat.

She picked Castle up at the loft on the way up to the crime scene. "Hey, Castle," she greeted him. "So I hear that Natalie Rhodes has been cast as Nikki Heat for the movie."

He turned to gape at her. "Yeah—wait. How did you know? I just found out myself."

"Captain Montgomery told me."

"Montgomery knows?"

She grinned at his open-mouthed shock. "Apparently, he got a phone call first thing this morning from none other than the Police Commissioner, who had received a phone call yesterday evening from Natalie Rhodes's agent. Apparently, Natalie Rhodes's reputation as being dedicated to her craft is true because she wants to learn what it's like to be Nikki by shadowing the person who inspired Nikki."

"And you said okay? Beckett! I can't believe you said it was okay for her to tail us without asking me first."

Kate raised her eyebrows at him. "Not us, Castle, me. And it wasn't exactly a matter of giving my permission, although I would have. The Police Commissioner told Captain Montgomery who told me that Natalie Rhodes was to be given full access in watching me work and my cooperation was appreciated."

He stared at her. "Oh my God. You like her, don't you?" he asked, his tone and expression so dismayed he might have just discovered she had a second job selling meth to high school kids.

She glanced at him in surprise. "Yeah, so? I thought you'd like her too."

"So was it her work in _Mutilation High_ that changed your life? Or perhaps _Demon Patrol?_ "

Kate smirked. Okay, so Natalie Rhodes wasn't known for her role in erudite, high-culture films. And as much as she loved Castle's books, not even she would claim that they were like works of Shakespeare. "Well, the way that she beheaded those zombies with a samurai sword was pretty cool," she quipped.

"Yes, it was cool," Castle conceded, "but that does not make her Nikki Heat. Nikki Heat is… classy, she's complicated. She's a thinking man's cop."

Kate felt herself flush a little, a smile escaping even though she bit her lip to hold it back. He was talking about Nikki and she really wasn't Nikki Heat. Whatever Castle might say about how she had inspired the character and she could recognize some of the shallow similarities and also the poignant echo of her personal backstory, Kate found it hard to believe that she was actually as cool or as capable as Nikki was. But when Castle spoke the way he did about Nikki, she couldn't help but feel her heart flutter because she knew that it was at least partly how he saw _her_ too.

"Well, give Natalie a chance, Castle. She might be a better actress than you think. You can't judge a book by its cover, after all."

"Yes, actually. Yes, I can," Castle contradicted. "When it's my book. And she's a civilian. I mean, aren't you afraid that she's going to get in the way and mess up the case?"

Kate scoffed and threw him an incredulous look. "You're kidding, right?" She knew he sometimes forgot that he wasn't a cop, but really, Castle the impulsive, the man who almost never listened to directions, was concerned that Natalie would get in the way?

Castle had the grace to look somewhat abashed. "Oh fine. But seriously, Beckett, aren't you the least bit concerned that she might somehow mess up the delicate synergy of our partnership?"

They had arrived at the crime scene—or a block away from where she could see the uniforms milling around and the crime scene tape. She parked her car and threw him a quick smile. "She'll only be around for a few days, Castle, and anyway, don't you have more faith in our partnership than that?"

"Well, put like that, of course I do."

She grinned at him. "Oh come on, Castle, stop fretting. We have a murder to concentrate on."

Ryan came hurrying up, heading straight to Castle, and Kate glanced at him in some surprise as he appeared not to even notice her presence. "Hey Castle, what's up?"

She caught Castle's half-amused, half-confused glance at her before he turned to Ryan. "Hey."

And then Ryan's rather jittery behavior was explained as he pulled out a ring box and showed the diamond engagement ring to Castle. Kate smiled. Ryan was planning to propose to Jenny and he wanted to consult Castle.

"Ryan!" Castle exclaimed in exaggerated surprise. "I don't know what to say. I mean, I'm flattered, but…"

Kate choked on a laugh. Silly Castle, she should have known he would clown around at first. She hurried on ahead to the body, leaving the two men to their talk.

Kate studied the body that had been shoved down onto the spikes of a small gate, getting the ID and estimated time of death from Lanie, before she walked back to brief Castle, still talking to Ryan.

"So how you gonna pop the question? Helicopter ride? Sky writer? Jumbo-tron?" Castle asked. Kate rolled her eyes. Typical Castle.

"I thought I'd just ask," Ryan answered rather uncertainly.

"You can't just ask," Castle stated emphatically. "You've got to make a statement. It's gotta be big. Helicopter ride."

Oh no. For Jenny's sake, Kate stepped in. "Actually, most girls prefer something a little more intimate."

Castle turned to her, holding up the ring box. "What, so he's just supposed to be boring and ask, 'will you marry me?'"

Kate froze, her heart abruptly speeding up as she looked between Castle and the ring. It was silly and absurd because she knew—she _knew_ —they were talking about Ryan proposing to Jenny. It had nothing to do with them, at all. But it was still Castle, holding up a diamond ring, and his words, _will you marry me_ , were echoing in her brain.

But what startled her wasn't her flustered reaction as much as it was the one clear thought in her suddenly-frozen brain. She _wanted_ it to be real.

Oh. Oh god. She wanted Castle to propose to her. Maybe not immediately—it was still a little early for that—but eventually. She _wanted_ to marry Castle.

One and done.

She had hoped it, believed it, but after being with him for almost seven months now, she was as sure of it as she could be. Castle was her one.

Ryan quickly retrieving the ring yanked Kate abruptly back to reality, to realizing that they were in the middle of an alley, surrounded by uniforms to say nothing of Ryan.

Castle blinked, closing his open mouth, suddenly looking ill at ease and not quite able to meet Kate's eyes.

And Kate felt a little chill of uncertainty wriggle through her. Castle had been married twice before and both times had ended in divorce and she knew from things he'd said that he didn't have fond memories of either of his marriages. She suddenly remembered the off-hand quip he'd made during the Sam Parker case last year—when she'd teasingly asked him if two wives was one wife too many and he'd retorted that it was two wives too many.

Maybe he didn't want to marry again. Twice burned, thrice shy. Or something.

She wasn't going to think about it, shoved the little niggle aside.

She could practically see Castle shaking off whatever thoughts he'd had.

"Helicopter rides are intimate," he protested addressing his words somewhere between her and Ryan.

Right, that was what they were talking about. How Ryan should propose. "Yeah, sure if you want to share the most romantic moment of your life with Reggie the chopper pilot," she said dryly.

Ryan hesitated, looking torn. "Big and intimate," he muttered to himself.

As much as Kate sympathized with Ryan, they had a case to work on. Work, she had to focus on her work; she would think about Castle later. "Well, plan your proposal later, Ryan, because we have a dead body on our hands, Stacey Collins, a high-end matchmaker."

The preliminary information about the victim and her whereabouts before she'd been killed were quickly run through and Kate sent Ryan off to look into the party guests.

And then Natalie Rhodes arrived, making an entrance.

Natalie Rhodes's roles in her horror movies had generally meant that she never looked at her best, fake blood and dirt and other gunk not exactly enhancing anyone's appearance. But Kate had seen a few publicity photos of Natalie Rhodes on the red carpet so she was expecting Natalie to be pretty, striking, with her dramatic eyes.

In real life, albeit dressed down in a fairly simple wraparound dress, Natalie Rhodes was undeniably gorgeous, blonde, tall, and voluptuous.

"Detective Beckett?" Natalie asked with a smile. "My God. You are exactly what I imagined Nikki Heat would look like."

Kate returned the smile, tamping down the urge to act like a fangirl. Instead, she introduced Natalie to Castle and to Esposito, who was smiling at Natalie and looking almost… shy if the word didn't sound ridiculous when applied to Espo and eager at the same time.

"Hi," Natalie said indifferently to both Castle and Esposito.

Beside her, Kate sensed Castle's rather affronted frown at Natalie's nonchalant response to being introduced to him. It surprised Kate too. Entirely aside from Castle having written the Nikki Heat books, he was, as Kate knew all too well, a good-looking man; women they encountered on their cases almost always noticed him and reacted to him in some way. Kate had become accustomed to turning a blind eye to it, much as she shrugged off the not-infrequent admiring looks she herself received from men they talked to on a case.

Natalie, on the other hand, behaved as if both Castle and Esposito were little more than statues as she turned back to Kate. "Just so you know, Detective, I'm very method. So it's all about getting inside of you, which starts with observing and noting."

"Okay, well, observe and note away," she responded easily and added teasingly, deliberately clapping a hand on Castle's shoulder to make her joke abundantly clear since in Castle's rather distracted state, she wouldn't bet on him immediately comprehending, "I'm already used to it."

As she'd expected, that worked to tug Castle out of his minor funk and he turned to her with an exaggeratedly reproachful expression, which she met with a look of spurious innocence.

Ryan's arrival—after he got over his rather incoherent awestruck response to Natalie Rhodes—and his information that Stacey Collins's office had been trashed pushed them back into work mode, Kate directing the boys to go to the office while she and Castle (and Natalie, obviously) went back to the precinct to start interviewing the party guests for anything they might have noticed yesterday evening.

Natalie accompanied her and Castle back to the precinct, automatically sliding into the passenger seat and leaving Castle to get into the back, which he did with something less than perfect graciousness, and Kate couldn't entirely hide her amusement. He was pouting and his disgruntlement made him look so young. It was… cute. And besides, Kate rather thought it might do Castle's tendency to vanity some good to be so roundly ignored by Natalie.

She spent the drive back to the precinct giving Natalie a very quick, bullet points introduction to the procedure for approaching a case, the working relationship with CSU and the ME's office, and building a case from there. Natalie listened with flattering attention, occasionally taking notes in a little notebook. Kate was beginning to think this whole experience of being observed by Natalie Rhodes was going to be even more enjoyable than she'd expected because it was pleasant to be listened to so seriously as she imparted information, without interruptions to make wisecracks as Castle had tended to do early on after he'd first started shadowing her. Her own ego was going to be in danger of being over-inflated if this went on for long, a small corner of her mind noted, but over just the few days that Natalie was going to be around, well, she could just enjoy being listened to as if she were a font of wisdom, couldn't she?

Back at the precinct—after uniforms and other gawkers had the chance to get autographs and their pictures taken with Natalie—Natalie sat in on the interviews with the party guests. And she rather thought that having Natalie around was going to be helpful because her presence impressed and distracted many of the witnesses so that Kate was reasonably certain that they weren't really watching their words in what they said and some were rather obviously more voluble than they might otherwise be talking to the police out of a desire to impress The Natalie Rhodes.

Not that any of the party guests had actually seen or noticed much useful.

"Are all the folks you interview always that unhelpful?" Natalie asked.

Kate shrugged a little. Sadly, spending a lot of time talking to unhelpful witnesses was part of the drudge work of being a detective, the part that never made it into the movies or even Castle's books (although she understood that, since a mystery novel that included all the irrelevant information that came out over the course of a case would also be one tedious book). "It's a numbers game. You talk to enough people, something usually shakes out."

Natalie grinned. " _That_ is going in the movie," she declared.

Castle bridled a little and spoke up, "Yeah, being a cop, it's kind of like being a prospector. Gotta sift through a lot of rock before you finally hit gold."

Natalie considered this for all of a second, frowning slightly. "No. Her line was better. 'Usually shakes out,'" Natalie muttered aloud to herself as she finished taking down Kate's line into her phone.

Kate smirked. Ha, one up for the detective, beating the writer. Poor Castle; he was not enjoying being ignored.

They spent the afternoon finding out more about Stacey Collins's life, noting that something had changed two months ago and that Stacey had been paying a decidedly sleazy character named Duke Jones a cool $5000 a week.

Kate's opinion that Natalie was going to be helpful was confirmed in rather dramatic fashion later when Natalie's suggestion to check the registry to find out who owned the Berglin-Ecklof bag found hidden in Stacey's office paid off with the name of Tonya Wellington. And she immediately forgot all about the awkward moment from earlier when she'd implied that anyone who paid $6000 for the Berglin-Ecklof was an idiot (Kate still didn't see what was so amazing about the bag to make it worth the price; at least, Tumi bags were well-made and sturdy and tended to be conveniently designed with multiple pockets and such). "You know, you might have cracked this case wide open," she said to Natalie.

Natalie practically lit up. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"It's addictive, right?" Castle observed. "That rush you get from solving a crime."

Kate glanced at him but he was studying Natalie, his gaze assessing, and she realized that he was rethinking his opinion of Natalie's ability to play Nikki Heat. She wondered if it had occurred to him to think what _she_ was thinking at his words—that she felt more of a rush from solving a crime _together._ She'd experienced enough of those Eureka moments of things falling into place before Castle had arrived and yes, it was exciting. It was partly what helped make up for the darkness and stress of her job. But what she found she loved more, what was more addicting, was being able to _share_ that moment of figuring things out. Experiencing that rush of accomplishment and being able to look at another person and see the same excitement, the same emotion, reflected in that other person's eyes and know that, in that moment, they were one, were feeling the exact same thing.

"Yeah," Natalie agreed happily. "I didn't get that from the script," she added, less happily.

"You should really read the book," Castle suggested rather too casually. (Kate blinked. Natalie hadn't read the book? Well, that explained one reason why she hadn't particularly cared when she'd been introduced to Castle earlier.)

"I definitely will," Natalie declared.

Kate smiled and glanced at Castle to see the arrested expression on his face as he observed Natalie. Yeah, he was definitely changing his mind about her.

The boys added in more information of what they'd found out about Tonya and Bill Wellington, including the very interesting fact that they'd been invited to Stacey's party last night but had declined. Well. Now they were getting somewhere.

Kate put the record of the bag's ownership down on her desk and stood up, her hands automatically going to her waist. "Let's see if they'll accept an invitation to my interrogation party."

Only to realize that Ryan and Esposito weren't paying attention to her anymore but were staring at Natalie.

"So uncanny," Ryan murmured.

"Spooky," Esposito muttered.

"Sexy," was Castle's blurted out response.

Sexy? Wait. What?

Kate looked over at Natalie to see that she had risen too and also had her hands on her waist. She was, in fact, perfectly mimicking Kate's own posture, suddenly making Kate feel incredibly self-conscious. (And Castle thought that was sexy? She knew he didn't mean anything by it but that was so not cool. She'd just been hoist with her own petard, for having too much fun at Castle's expense when Natalie had so totally ignored Castle and only paid attention to Kate. She'd liked it better when Castle didn't approve of Natalie. Not that she was jealous. She wasn't.)

"Are you doing me?"

"I'm just working on your posture," Natalie responded easily as if there was nothing weird about it at all. "You know, it changes depending on whether you have a suspect or not."

It did?

"Really?" Kate frowned. She wasn't sure she liked the idea that her body language revealed so much. It made her feel transparent, easy to read. And she wasn't. Was she? She was a cop; she had worked hard to perfect a poker face. It was necessary to be able to bluff suspects in an interrogation and in other situations too. She knew Castle could read her fairly easily but that was different—he was different. He was… Castle. Reading people was one of his writer's talents and besides that, he knew her.

Natalie smirked. "Like I said. Getting inside your head. When I'm done, I'll do you better than you." She snapped her fingers and swanned off triumphantly, leaving Kate to stare and then feel abruptly conscious of the fact that the boys—drat them, anyway—weren't even trying to hide their fascination at this little byplay. She narrowed her eyes at them. "Tonya Wellington. Now," she ordered crisply.

"Yep," Espo muttered as both boys turned away but not without making a poor effort at hiding their amusement.

Kate sat back down on her desk and then stood up and then sat down again, crossing and uncrossing her arms, suddenly not sure what to do with herself. She felt awkward and self-conscious in a way she hadn't felt since she'd been in the gawky, bumbling teenager phase, still trying to figure out how to deal with her changing body.

She changed her mind. Being observed was one thing; having someone else imitate one's every move was another. And oh god, Natalie Rhodes was going to be around for at least another couple days; there was no way Natalie would agree to leave before this case was over, that was for sure.

She glanced at Castle, who was ostentatiously glancing around at the ceiling or around the precinct while doing a (very bad) job of hiding his smirk. She narrowed her eyes at him. "Shut up, Castle. It's not funny."

He forced a cough. "I didn't say a word," he protested with wide-eyed innocence.

"Your expression speaks volumes. And it is not funny. You try acting natural while having someone mimic your every move."

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

She snorted. "Not like this, it's not. This is like having a clone, a creepy clone who's trying to replace me."

"You're exaggerating, Beckett," he said mildly. "I never thought the unflappable Detective Kate Beckett would get so worked up over something so minor."

"I am not worked up!" she protested. She sat down in her chair and made a show of looking something up on her computer. "I'm just fine," she huffed. And she was. Really.

Castle was right, not that she'd admit it to him. She was getting worked up but damn it, she could control herself and be calm. She was Detective Kate Beckett; she wasn't going to let the distracting presence of some two-bit actress distract her from doing her job. She had a murder to solve, actual important work to do, never mind what acting preparation Natalie Rhodes had to do.

* * *

The next morning, Kate sat at her desk and tried very hard to ignore the fact that Natalie Rhodes had sailed in that morning and blithely taken up _her_ spot in front of the murder board, even having the nerve to write in some more information. Natalie was writing on _her_ murder board! No one wrote on her murder board without her permission! She barely allowed Castle to write on it and only when she was feeling particularly magnanimous.

Damn it, she needed coffee.

Castle was running a little later than usual that morning; he'd sent her a text earlier to say that he had to run a quick errand before coming in to the precinct. But since that had been an hour ago, she expected him any minute and as if the thought had summoned him, she heard his familiar footsteps approaching behind her and she lifted her head so she could turn to him.

But of course— _of course_ —Natalie too turned away from the murder board and before Kate could do more than blink, had come up and blithely appropriated one of the coffee cups Castle was carrying. "Thanks, Castle."

Castle gaped a little. "That's… I was… uh… you're welcome," he stammered and then sent her a look of helpless apology.

Kate made a small moue of understanding for his benefit. What was he supposed to do, snatch the coffee from Natalie's hand? As much as Kate rather enjoyed that mental image, she knew perfectly well he couldn't do that. But really! The nerve of her to take Kate's coffee!

"So, where are we?" Castle asked.

Kate opened her mouth to answer but Natalie smoothly interjected, "Ryan and Esposito are digging into Tonya Wellington."

"What about Duke Jones? His neighbor confirm his romantic evening?" Castle asked, still addressing Kate.

"He—" Kate began only to have Natalie steamroll right over her, talking over her as if Kate had suddenly become invisible or mute, "So did a couple other neighbors. Who complained about the noise. So it looks like Duke Jones alibis out."

"What she said," Kate clipped out and then stood up, sidestepping Natalie to stand in front of Castle. "Can we talk for a second?" she asked more for Natalie's benefit than his.

"Sure."

Kate slipped her arm into his and then half-dragged him into the conference room. She couldn't _believe_ Natalie's nerve, just stepping in as if Kate herself didn't exist, writing on _her_ murder board, updating Castle on _her_ case. Stepping in as if she could do Kate's job for her for real and not just pretend. She opened her mouth to protest all of this but what came out was, "She took my coffee, Castle!"

She shut her mouth. Damn it. He might understand—and she could see he did—but to anyone else, it would sound like she was going insane. To anyone else, it would just be coffee.

But this was _her_ coffee, her coffee from Castle. Their special thing.

Castle glanced over her shoulder through the blinds of the window and then, apparently deciding they were unobserved for now, he settled one hand on her back so she was half in his embrace. "I know. I'll make you a cup, Beckett, okay?"

"Okay," she agreed rather reluctantly, knowing she sounded rather petulant but not quite able to help it. She knew she was being just a little silly but she really didn't like that Natalie had taken the coffee that Castle had bought for her. It might be only one of the hundreds of coffees he must have bought for her since they'd started working together but it was still a little piece of his generosity, a tangible symbol every day of what he would do to make her smile. She suddenly realized that if Castle ever bought coffee for another woman, she would feel as if doing so was an act of infidelity and having another woman just _take_ the coffee meant for her made her feel rather unpleasantly similar to that.

"It's not only that, Castle. It's… everything! Everything I do, she does. Even when I'm thinking, I can feel her in my head like some kind of brain-eating parasite from one of her movies." In some corner of her mind, Kate knew she sounded like she was unspooling—and had been spending too much time with Castle because a brain-eating parasite sounded more like one of his crazy theories than something she would say but it was rather what it felt like. Knowing Natalie was watching her and doing everything she did, trying to anticipate her every move. She now knew what it was like to have an evil doppelganger.

Okay fine, her rational brain reasserted itself, Natalie wasn't evil, just… creepy. Either way, Kate's enjoyment of having Natalie Rhodes around "observing" her was well and truly over.

Castle's hand on her back moved up and down in small, soothing strokes, and she relaxed a little, her back curving automatically into the caress. She didn't know how he did it but his touch almost seemed to dissolve the tension inside her. "She's a dedicated actress. She just wants to do a good job. But she's not you; she can never be you, Beckett. You're inimitable. All right?"

She managed a faint smile. "Okay, thanks, Castle."

If they'd been alone or anywhere but at the precinct, she would have kissed him. Instead, displaying that instinctive sense of timing that both the boys seemed to have for interrupting her and Castle, Ryan walked in at that moment making Castle immediately drop his hand as they both turned to face him. Ryan, bless him, didn't blink an eye and got right to telling them about the information he'd found about the Wellingtons and Kate felt herself relaxing yet further as she and Castle settled into building theory, working out that Stacey had used Duke's assistant, Chloe, to honey-trap Bill Wellington to save Tonya from a bad marriage. The delicate synergy of their partnership was still working, a small voice in Kate's mind commented, remembering Castle's phrase.

* * *

Later on that day, they'd found out much more about Stacey's hired honey-trap, Chloe.

And since Natalie had conveniently gone off somewhere after receiving a package—she was getting deliveries here, seriously?—Kate and Castle were alone in the conference room where Castle was going through Stacey's financial statements.

Kate looked up from reviewing the file on the so-called Chloe, filling Castle in. "Duke's assistant, Chloe? Greta Morgan. Former exotic dancer. Picked up a couple of times for solicitation. Probation and time served," Kate finished dramatically. "Looks like she decided to go a little more upscale," she added in a more businesslike tone.

"You know, given how much Tonya paid Stacey and how little Stacey paid Duke, looks like money is our motive," Castle surmised.

Kate made a noncommittal noise. She wasn't sure about that. Shoving a victim down onto a fence seemed like a crime of desperation, less about money than more primal emotions. "Maybe. APBs are out on Greta, and I contacted other precincts to find out who else is investigating her and for what."

As if on cue, she heard Natalie's voice. "Talk to enough people, something usually shakes out."

Kate turned and—what the hell?! Her jaw dropped. It was… her. Well, not _her_ her, but Natalie-as-her. Natalie had somehow acquired a wig that eerily resembled Kate's own hairstyle and had changed into an outfit of a button-down and slacks that almost exactly echoed her own outfit, her usual work clothes. It was… Good God, if seeing Natalie mimic her every action before had been creepy, this was somewhere even beyond creepy. It was like staring at a clone of herself. This must be what it was like to have an identical twin.

And then as if to add insult to injury, Velazquez walked up and said, "Here you go, Beckett," and handed a file to Natalie, who accepted it as if it was the most natural thing in the world to answer to Kate's own name, responding, "Thanks, Johnson. It's Johnson, isn't it?" Natalie asked Kate.

"It's Velazquez," Kate snapped. "And you are _not_ me."

"No," Natalie acknowledged and then she actually leaned down over the table in front of Castle in a position that Kate knew was giving him a perfect view of her chest. "But I'm getting warmer," she breathed, her voice lowering to a husky, seductive tone that seemed tailor-made to render any heterosexual male incoherent.

"You certainly are," Castle murmured absently, his eyes wide and still staring at Natalie as if mesmerized.

Kate frowned and quickly edged in next to Natalie, slapping down the file Velazquez had just brought in. "Okay," she interjected with a little more force and at a louder volume than she normally spoke, "So the word's out on Greta and we're already tracking Duke's credit cards. Why don't we just call it a night?"

Natalie straightened up. "What? But it's still early," she protested.

"Yeah, well, it's a high stress job and I wouldn't want anyone to get burnt out," Kate explained falsely. She'd had enough of Natalie Rhodes for the day. And she certainly did not want to see any more of Natalie in her current incarnation as Kate's unwanted identical twin. Even less did she want to see Natalie apparently deciding that Castle was her preferred audience, seeking his attention and his admiration.

Not that she was jealous.

"All right. I'll go pack up my things," Natalie sighed as if resigning herself to some great disappointment.

Kate almost slammed the conference room door closed. "You cannot tell me that _that_ is normal," she practically hissed at Castle.

"She's just committed to the role," Castle placated, standing up and moving around the table. "You should be flattered."

Flattered. Kate scoffed.

But before Kate could actually try to put any of her admittedly messy reaction into words, the conference room door opened and Natalie walked in. Again.

Natalie ignored Kate as if Kate weren't even in the room and addressed herself exclusively to Castle, holding out the box in which she'd apparently received her "Kate Beckett" outfit. "Hey, Castle, can you give me a hand with my stuff?"

Castle blinked, glanced quickly at Kate, but made the only answer he could really give. The answer Kate knew perfectly well he would have to give; to refuse point blank would be rude and Castle was not capable of being so rude to any woman's face, to say nothing of his usual kindness and instinct for chivalry making him inclined to say yes to such requests. Martha had trained him well. "Uh, sure," he agreed, accepting the box.

He was being polite, Kate told herself, that was all. Besides, she trusted him.

She gathered up the files from the case and Stacey's financial records from the conference room table and took them out to her desk, trying to keep them in some order to get right back into it tomorrow.

The sound of a dull thud had Kate looking up and turning to find the source of it.

Natalie had neatly slipped the box out of Castle's hands, dropping it on the floor. And she could only stare as the last thing she saw before the elevator door slid closed was Natalie pushing Castle against the elevator wall and leaning in to kiss him.

She changed her mind. Natalie was definitely an evil, not just creepy, doppelganger.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2:_ *runs and hides* I plan to post the second part tomorrow. And both chapters based on "Nikki Heat" are fluffy, I promise, so don't kill me!


	10. Chapter 9: Nikki Heat 2

Author's Note: As promised, the second of the two chapters based on "Nikki Heat." More familiar dialogue ahead. Also, bonus points for anyone who spots the reference to "The West Wing."

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 9_

She trusted Castle, Kate told herself for about the tenth time in the hour and half since she'd left the precinct and returned to her apartment. She trusted him and she knew him. She _knew_ he would never cheat on her. It didn't matter that Natalie was gorgeous and voluptuous and had a bust that put Kate's less well-endowed chest to shame. Not that she was jealous. She wasn't—it wasn't jealousy that made her not like to see another woman, and a beautiful woman at that, trying to seduce _her_ boyfriend.

Not that it mattered what Natalie did. She trusted Castle. She knew he wasn't going to do anything with Natalie. Was even more certain of it because she knew that Meredith had cheated on Castle; having been on the other side of it, he would never do that to anyone else, let alone her.

Natalie Rhodes was not the issue, although trusting Castle didn't make Kate's feelings Natalie-ward much more charitable.

She trusted him and she knew he loved her. Kate didn't care about Natalie—well, okay, that wasn't true, she cared but she wasn't _worried_ about Natalie. Natalie wasn't a threat to her relationship with Castle. She was choosing to dwell on Natalie, her evil doppelganger, to avoid what was really troubling her, she admitted reluctantly. She'd shoved the initial doubt, the questions, aside, but doubts and questions that were ignored still had a way of taking root and sprouting up inside her mind until they couldn't quite be ignored anymore.

She stared down at the photo album her dad had given her after she'd moved in to her apartment, the album with copies of their old family photos, since her copy had been destroyed when her old apartment had exploded. She studied her parents' wedding photo and for once, she looked at it with less grief and a more personal longing. Looking at her mom's youthful, smiling face in her beautiful, flowing white gown—Kate could see her own resemblance to her mother even more strongly in this picture. Her mother had been only a few years younger than Kate was now.

She suddenly remembered Castle daring her to say that she'd never torn a picture out of a wedding magazine. Technically, she hadn't. She'd once seen a picture of a wedding dress and marked the page in the magazine that she'd kept for months but she hadn't actually torn the picture out. She couldn't remember exactly how old she'd been at the time, sometime in high school, maybe around 16? Younger? It didn't matter.

Any youthful dreams about her own wedding Kate might have had had shattered along with everything else in her world the day her mother had died. Since then, Kate had never thought about her wedding, about getting married, with any real seriousness.

Even when she'd been with Will, even when she'd begun to acknowledge to herself that she could see herself marrying him one day, it had always been a thought about some hazy, distant future. Had been more about her mind thinking that Will would be a good match because he was a good man, who appeared to understand her well enough, who understood about her job, and they got along well enough.

But she hadn't been in love with Will.

She was in love with Castle.

She heard his voice in her head, the words repeating in an endless loop. _Will you marry me?_

And not even all her rational mind's protests that he hadn't been talking about her at all, had only been asking as a hypothetical to help Ryan in his proposal planning, could erase the memory from her mind. Not when the only response she could think of to the question was _yes_.

She wanted to marry Castle. Oh god oh god oh god.

When had it happened? How had it happened? Stupid questions but somehow fitting too. How had she, Kate Beckett, who was a mass of insecurities about her ability to have a real, lasting relationship, who was always quick to doubt, who no longer believed in happily-ever-afters, somehow come to this, to being so… certain of her relationship with Castle to know that she wanted to marry him? And yet, amazing as it seemed, she had.

Memories, snapshots of their relationship over the last six months, played through her mind—dinners with Alexis and Martha in the loft, playfully checking him with her hip as she passed him in the kitchen as they worked together to make dinner, the time he'd teasingly flicked water at her as he washed the dishes making her retaliate and splash him back until they'd both ended up thoroughly soaked with half the dishes still unwashed. Long nights in his bed and sometimes in hers, the view when she rose up above him in bed and proceeded to drive him crazy with her hands and her mouth until all he could do was groan her name, times when he returned the favor and reduced her to an incoherent, breathless mess. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, when she had still worked her usual holiday shift but he had insisted on coming into the precinct on Christmas, after celebrating with Alexis and Martha, bearing a basket of goodies which he'd distributed to the grateful uniforms who'd pulled the short straw, and the usual coffees for both of them, and then settled into his usual chair and stayed for the rest of her shift, making the hours fly by.

Laughing with him, solving cases with him, talking to him, watching him with Alexis and Martha. Just… loving him and being loved by him.

How could she not want to spend the rest of her life with him? How could she not want to marry him?

But what if he didn't want to marry again, after his history?

She pictured again the way his eyes had flared wide, how flustered he'd looked, how he'd been unable to meet her eyes, when he'd realized that his actions and his words had sounded as if he had, inadvertently, proposed.

And she felt her lingering insecurities creep in, whispering that maybe he didn't want to get married, that maybe she wouldn't be enough for him, not forever.

She tried to tell herself she was being silly, paranoid even, worrying over nothing. Castle _loved_ her, she knew that. He'd told her and more importantly, he showed her he loved her in so many little ways every day. It was in his eyes, in his smile, in the way he touched her. In the way he sometimes mumbled her name and reached out for her even in sleep.

They'd been together for more than six months now, were comfortable and happy in their relationship—well, she was happy and she thought, believed, that he was happy too. But they hadn't really talked about where they were going, the future of their relationship. At first, it had been too soon and then they'd just been enjoying themselves, still _were_ enjoying themselves, enjoying being together.

At some point, she expected him to ask her to move back into the loft, for real this time. He hadn't been entirely thrilled about her moving into her own apartment in the first place although he had come to appreciate having a place where they could always be alone, didn't need to worry about his mother or his daughter seeing or hearing something inappropriate.

He'd promised always and told her he believed in their relationship. And she knew he loved her and was committed to her.

But he'd never said anything about marriage.

She was being silly, she told herself. She didn't even know why she was obsessing over this; she'd never been one of those girls who believed that getting married was a definite goal.

And yet…

Kate's thoughts were abruptly interrupted at the sound of a knock on the door. And she momentarily forgot about her uncertainty in the joy that bubbled up inside her. It was him. She knew it was him. She supposed it was fanciful of her—although maybe not—but she could swear she recognized the sound of his knock, almost always knew when it was him.

She quickly put the photo album away and went to open her door.

It was Castle, holding a bottle of wine.

"Hey, Castle."

"She tried to kiss me," he blurted out, the words spilling from him as if he couldn't hold them in any longer.

Kate bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling, forgetting all about her irrational doubts in the rush of warmth settling inside her chest. He was here. He must have hurried through his dinner with Alexis—he almost never missed dinner with Alexis, she knew—and rushed here immediately afterwards to be here so early in the evening.

And she knew she didn't really need a ring or a piece of paper confirming their relationship; she just needed Castle in her life.

Natalie had tried to kiss him. Tried. As in Natalie hadn't succeeded. "I know," she said with an equanimity that surprised even herself as she stepped back to let him in. "I saw before the elevator door closed."

"I pushed her away," he said quickly. "I swear I didn't do anything to make her think I wanted it—I _don't_ want her—but she just dropped the box I was holding in front of me and trapped me against the wall but I pushed her away before she could—"

Kate gave in and let her smile escape, stepping in to slide her arms loosely around his waist. "I trust you, Castle. You don't need to explain."

He relaxed a little, curling his free arm around her waist. "Kate, I wouldn't—I would never cheat on you, you know that, right?"

"I know."

He smiled slightly, his eyes clearing of the last remnants of worry. And she returned his smile. Of course she trusted this man; how could she not trust a man who would look so worried for fear that she might have been hurt or troubled from doubting his fidelity? "And Natalie might try but she's only a cheap imitation. You're the real thing and you're unique."

"Will the real Nikki Heat please stand up?" she quipped.

He laughed aloud and she felt a flicker of triumph as she usually did when she made him laugh. "It's the real Kate Beckett and she's better than Nikki Heat any day."

She grinned. "Thank you. Coming from Nikki Heat's creator, that means a lot."

He shrugged a little but his eyes were soft, belying the casual gesture. "I meant it. You're one of a kind."

She kissed him quickly just for that, the last of her niggling insecurities over Natalie seeming to so easily step in to replace her vanishing, and then drew back. "You brought wine?"

He blinked, seeming to have almost forgotten what he was holding. "Oh, yeah, another bottle of the wine you liked so much the other night at the loft."

She flicked her eyebrows at him teasingly as she moved into her kitchen to get the corkscrew. "Trying to get me drunk, Mr. Castle?"

He scoffed. "If I wanted to get you drunk, I'd have brought hard liquor."

She laughed. "Fair point."

He opened the bottle and poured each of them a glass and she settled onto the couch while he curled his arm easily around her and she shifted to lean against him.

"So how are Alexis and Martha?"

"That reminds me, Beckett, I think I'm getting a little concerned about the sort of movies Alexis is watching. She appears to have seen all of Natalie's oeuvre. She was just telling me about how much she liked Natalie in _Knife 3D_ and she's seen _Hell's Crawl Space_ and everything."

"That's not all that surprising, Castle. Natalie's movies have been pretty popular."

He grumbled a little. "Alexis and I sometimes watch scary movies and we watched _Demon Patrol_ together on one of those nights, and I let her hide behind me—"

She snorted. "More like you hide behind her, Alexis has told me stories about these scary movie nights of yours."

"That is so not true!" he protested with an offense so patently exaggerated that it was basically a confession. "I was trying to ensure she had the best view. And my daughter talks too much."

"She does not and I think Alexis is probably old enough and mature enough to decide for herself what movies she can and cannot handle."

"Have some sympathy on a poor father, who's worried about the sorts of things his daughter is being exposed to."

"You let Alexis watch _Demon Patrol_ with you. What's so different about her watching _Knife 3D_ with her friends?"

"You're not being very helpful," he grumbled. "I'm a father in pain."

"Really, you're just a pain," she quipped.

"Hey!"

She laughed. "Castle, does Alexis seem like she's been traumatized after watching these movies?"

"Well, no," he admitted reluctantly.

"See? She's got a good head on her shoulders and her feet on the ground. And I'm sure if she gets nightmares after watching a horror movie, she knows she can come to you."

"I think I liked it better when Alexis watched cartoons all the time," he groused.

She turned her head to smirk at him. "She still watches cartoons, Castle. I seem to remember accompanying a certain teenager and her father to the theatre to watch _Tangled_ just last fall."

His eyes and his expression softened as he smiled. "That was a fun night."

"Yeah, it was," she agreed softly. They had gone out for dinner and a movie, just her, Castle, and Alexis. It had been a good night, a family night in a way that had made Kate feel warmed through, surrounded by love, in a way she hadn't really felt since her mom had died. Castle had made a token protest when Alexis had asked to watch _Tangled_ but both Kate and Alexis had been able to see that he hadn't meant it. Kate was even sure she'd seen tears glistening in his eyes at certain points when she'd glanced over at him. But she'd refrained from teasing him about it (well, mostly) since she could, after all, understand that the scenes about parents mourning the disappearance of their only daughter would affect him.

They were quiet for a little while. And then they chatted, desultorily, about the case (although Kate noted that Castle didn't mention Natalie at all, which was fine with her) and Stacey Collins and the Wellingtons and the entire honey-trap scheme.

"It's sad, really, Stacey Collins was just trying to save these women from bad marriages and she ends up getting killed for it," she commented.

"It is sad when someone gets killed for trying to do something good."

"Yeah." She sighed a little. "It happens fairly often, unfortunately."

"No good deed goes unpunished."

She smiled slightly. "Clever, Castle. Anyone would think you're a writer or something."

He laughed softly and kissed her hair.

They talked for a little while longer as they finished up their wine and then she led him into her bedroom and proceeded to make very sure that she was the only woman on his mind and, indeed, the only thing he was aware of in the world.

They parted the next morning with a lingering kiss, she to head into the precinct to get an early workout in and he to go back to the loft to see Alexis before she left for school and to change before he, too, returned to the precinct.

Kate greeted him on his arrival with a quick smile, made all the easier because Natalie had not arrived yet.

"Good morning, Detective," he greeted her with rather exaggerated formality, as if he hadn't just seen her little more than an hour and half ago, giving her a private, intimate look that existed mostly in the light in his eyes. And she couldn't quite help flushing since she could see that he was remembering the way she had woken him up this morning with a wickedly wandering hand.

With all that, it was a little jarring to see Jenny rushing out of the precinct with a tear-streaked face.

And of course—of course—Natalie had to walk in just as Jenny was running out, Jenny stopping to throw one last devastated, betrayed look between Ryan and Natalie before fleeing.

Leaving Ryan to awkwardly attempt to explain the misunderstanding that had led to the contretemps.

Kate winced with sympathy for Jenny, softened with even more compassion since, after all, she was the one whose boyfriend Natalie had actually tried to seduce. "She thought you'd lied to her," she said a little lamely, exchanging a look with Castle. It wasn't the lie so much as what Jenny had assumed must be the reason for the lie, that Ryan had cheated on her, but she wasn't going to say that.

Ryan winced at the words and then rushed off to try to call Jenny and explain, leaving them to stand around in some awkwardness.

Castle went over to talk to Esposito, who looked surprisingly guilty over his own inadvertent role in the whole mess, and Kate retreated to her desk, only to realize that Natalie had followed her. Oh bother. She really did not feel like dealing with her unwanted (evil) twin right now, especially knowing what Jenny must be thinking and feeling right now. Kate made a mental note to send Jenny a text message in a little while, hoping that Jenny might find it easier to believe Kate even if she found it difficult to believe Ryan.

Natalie sat down in Castle's chair and leaned forward, lowering her voice. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," Kate agreed with as much casualness as she could muster, taking a large gulp of her coffee.

"Is Castle gay?"

She almost choked and spit out her coffee. What?!

She cleared her throat, attempting to regain some composure. "What? No. No," she said again. "Why?" she asked, warily.

"Then you two are an item but you're sworn to secrecy, right?"

Kate was thankful that she hadn't attempted to take another sip of coffee because she might have spit that out too. Come to think of it, she wasn't going to dare take another drink until Natalie was finished with wherever this bizarre conversation was going. And she was absolutely not going to tell Natalie about her relationship with Castle. It might be a sort of open secret in the precinct but it was none of Natalie's business and anyway, Kate had seen movies involving evil twins and how one would steal the other's boyfriend and then kill the other in her sleep. Oh no, Kate had seen how these things played out and she wasn't playing. "Why are you asking me this?"

Natalie glanced around. "Last night I tried to kiss him and he didn't let me and then I tried inviting him back to my place and he said something to me I have never heard from a man before."

She paused dramatically while Kate noted that Castle had not mentioned Natalie's asking him back to her place, likely not wanting to underscore how persistent Natalie had been, and tried, very hard, not to resent Natalie. It didn't matter that Castle had rejected her; it was the principle of the thing! And really, what kind of woman responded to a man pushing her away after she had tried to kiss him by then inviting him back to her place?

"What?" Kate finally, rather reluctantly, prompted when it seemed like Natalie wasn't going to continue.

"No."

"No?" Kate echoed a little blankly. Seriously? No man had ever told Natalie Rhodes no? Until Castle. Kate bit the inside of her lip hard to keep from smiling.

"I know," Natalie said as if Kate's response had been an expression of shock that any man would reject her. "I don't get it. Men don't say no to me."

Clearly they should. Kate bit back the words. "I—um, what does all this have to do with me?"

"I am not wearing this get-up for my health. You're Nikki Heat. He's Jameson Rook. I need to sleep with him in the name of character research. Can you talk to him?"

Kate choked on air. She—um—what?!

"And say what?" Kate finally managed to ask. Was the woman insane?

"I don't know. Give him permission or something."

She—um—what?! Kate opened her mouth, closed it, opened it, and then closed it again. Words. Damn it, she knew she'd been capable of speech and coherent thought just a few seconds ago. What the—just… _what?_

Natalie wanted Kate to—what?

Even if Kate and Castle weren't together, Kate would sooner have eaten her case paperwork than she would have interfered in any male friend's sex life to such an extent. She couldn't imagine what Natalie was thinking. She tried—and failed—to imagine giving Castle "permission" of that kind some time shortly after they'd met, back when she'd mostly found him irritating. Or even giving either of the boys that sort of "permission." Yeah, no, that would never ever have happened. Ever.

"I… uh…" she finally stammered, "I need to go. Over there. Now." It wasn't the most coherent thing she'd ever said but it was all she could manage.

Kate hurriedly stood up, belatedly remembering to grab her coffee, and then she fled from what had to be the single most bizarre conversation she'd ever had.

Yeah, Natalie Rhodes was definitely insane.

Kate took refuge in the break room, first sinking down in one of the chairs as she tried to get a grip on what Natalie had just said. She wanted to sleep with Castle in the name of character research? That wasn't dedicated, that was obsessive and way over the line of insanity.

After a minute, Kate found herself laughing, cracking up helplessly, as she remembered Natalie asking if Castle was gay. Oh god, of all the questions to ask about one of the City tabloids' favorite womanizers, even if Kate knew better than anyone that Castle's playboy reputation was somewhat exaggerated and most definitely a thing of the past.

She choked back her laughter as she belatedly remembered that the break room door was open and people were probably wondering if Detective Beckett were going crazy. She made a mental note to tell Castle what Natalie had asked, if only so she could see the look on his face.

And really, no man had ever said no to Natalie Rhodes? Except for Castle. _Her_ Castle. Kate allowed herself a small, smug smile.

After a minute, Kate stood up and ventured to the window of the break room overlooking her desk, although she kept herself standing in front of the small stack of drawers containing packets of tea, instant coffee, and the various small packets of sugar, artificial sweeteners, and other things to add to drinks so that she wasn't immediately visible to Natalie.

Her evil doppelganger was now standing in front of the murder board, putting on a show of studying it intently.

It all seemed very… fake, staged, but at the same time, unpleasantly familiar. Looking at an exaggerated caricature of herself. Ugh. Kate grimaced.

She sensed Castle come into the break room looking for her and then felt the heat from his body warm her back even through the layers of their clothes and the couple inches of space he discreetly kept between their bodies, as he came up behind her, looking over her shoulder at Natalie.

"Hey, everything okay?" he asked quietly.

"Do I really do that?" she murmured.

"Yes, and it's adorable."

Kate couldn't help but smile. She would never have thought that she would ever appreciate having such a word applied to her. Adorable was usually such an infantilizing epithet, meant for little children and small animals, not for grown women who were homicide detectives at that. But somehow, from Castle, she didn't mind it. She knew perfectly well that he didn't mean it to sound in any way patronizing and Castle had a healthy respect for her strength and her toughness. "Adorable, huh?"

"Yes." He paused and then added, his voice lowering, "It's also really sexy when you do that." On the words, she felt his large hand cup her butt before sliding around her hip in a leisurely caress, ending with his fingers just barely slipping between her legs, his touch setting her entire body on fire.

Kate suppressed a gasp and forcibly stiffened her legs to keep from relaxing, parting her legs further. They were in the precinct!

"Castle, not here!" she hissed—or tried to hiss since her voice came out sounding more like a breathless moan.

He—aggravating, persistent, tempting, annoying man—deliberately let his hand slide further down her thigh before he lifted his hand and stepped back, leaving her feeling as if she were standing in an oven.

She was going to kill him. Really. He _knew_ what he was doing to her and he still chose to tease her, arouse her.

She shut her eyes and tried, with limited success, to breathe deeply. And thought about the un-sexiest things she possibly could.

Thankfully, Castle had the sense to stay silent since the sound of his voice would have wreaked havoc on her efforts to cool down.

She had barely managed to tamp down her rioting senses when Ryan walked in, followed shortly after by Esposito, who had managed to find Chloe, a.k.a. Greta Morgan, in one of the hotels she had reserved a room at. And Kate snapped back into Detective Beckett mode, although not before shooting a narrow-eyed look at Castle who met it with an expression of innocence that would have done justice to a saint.

Greta's interrogation, where Natalie showcased her ability to play Nikki in a forceful mood, led them to the trail of the real killer, one of the other husbands who had been honey-trapped.

Kate took a quick minute to shoot off a text to Jenny, telling her generally that Ryan loved her and was distraught that she wasn't answering his calls, while the boys were checking up on those men's alibis.

And before long, although not before a tense stand-off with the killer, they had arrested him and closed the case. Which, thankfully, meant the end of Natalie's few days of "observing" her.

Now that Natalie was leaving, Kate found it much easier to smile and see her off in a friendly fashion but Kate's charitable feelings toward Natalie had a rather short lifespan as Natalie effectively diluted them with her decidedly flirtatious invitation to Castle to visit her on set.

Not particularly helped by Castle's response, "Wouldn't miss it."

She shot him a look and he met her eyes with a little shrug. "What, I wouldn't. I've never had a book made into a movie, you can't think I don't want to visit the set while they're filming."

True enough; she managed a twitch of her lips that was the closest approximation to a smile she could reach.

Then they were all distracted as Jenny appeared, much to Ryan's obvious happiness.

And Ryan took the opportunity to, well, go big and intimate by proposing.

Kate smiled even as she felt tears pricking at her eyes at Jenny's transparent surprise and happiness, a joy echoed in Ryan's face.

Jenny and Ryan were so happy and from all Kate had seen of them, they were a perfectly-matched couple, Jenny's sweetness and kindness helping Ryan to preserve his lingering idealism, his lack of cynicism, even in the face of all he saw. Jenny, she found herself thinking, did for Ryan what Castle did for her in some ways, although Kate was not nearly as quick to trust or believe as Ryan was.

She was distracted from watching Ryan and Jenny as she felt Castle briefly slip his hand into hers, giving it a quick pressure, a subtle gesture since they were surrounded by the rest of the precinct.

She glanced up at him and met his eyes to see the happiness on his face, the way his eyes shone with whole-hearted gladness for their friends.

"That was big," he commented quietly.

"And intimate," Kate agreed.

Castle glanced back at Jenny and Ryan. "They're great together," he murmured.

Kate's eyes returned to Ryan and Jenny. "They are." She looked back at Castle to see that he was still watching Ryan and Jenny, his expression softening from its earlier happiness until he looked almost wistful.

"I think I envy them," he admitted absently.

Kate's heart flipped, her breath hitching, a whole flock of happy butterflies suddenly taking up residence in her stomach. Oh. He envied them for being engaged, for promising to get married.

He _was_ thinking about marriage. He did want to marry her.

And then he abruptly seemed to realize what he'd said and his head jerked around to stare at her, his eyes wide and nervous. "I mean, not for right now," he blurted out hastily, "just, you know, for the future, someday, maybe, if you… I mean, I don't…"

She cut off his words by slipping her hand into his, in her turn, giving it a quick squeeze. "Someday," she told him softly. "After all," she added, smiling a little, "they say third time's the charm."

He let out his breath. "Yeah," he breathed, his tone amazed.

Their eyes met and held for a long moment, the two of them forming a little island of quiet intimacy in the sea of excited congratulations as the rest of the division converged on Ryan and Jenny. And then they, too, joined the group to hug Ryan and Jenny in turn.

And all the while, Kate was conscious of a warm glow of hope inside her in addition to her real, sincere happiness over Ryan and Jenny's engagement.

 _Someday._

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: Thank you, everyone, for reading. Wishing everyone who celebrates it a very happy Thanksgiving._


	11. Chapter 10: January 9

Author's Note: This chapter is different from the others because it's not based on an episode but is about the January 9th anniversary, which has so much potential for moving Castle and Beckett's relationship forward so I couldn't resist writing about it. Fair warning, this is a very long, heavy and emotional chapter.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 10_

As always, Kate woke up early in the morning of January 9 and then lay in bed with slow, hot tears trickling down her face, tears that she didn't even bother trying to wipe away.

Today, of all days in the year, she just let herself cry.

12 years. Her mother had died 12 years ago today. 12 years ago, her mother had been caught in an alley by Dick Coonan, stabbed repeatedly, and then left to bleed out, on the cold and dirty pavement, alone.

Kate didn't know how many times she had mentally played out the imagined scene in her mind, how many times it had played out in her nightmares. Always before, the killer had been just a dark, menacing, faceless figure. This year, for the first time, the killer had a face, a name. She had details she hadn't known before, which wound had been the first, what kind of blade had done it. She had held a copy of the same knife in her own hand.

Years ago, when she'd still been a uniform, she'd been called to a domestic disturbance to find the man threatening his girlfriend with a kitchen knife. The man had been volatile, upset, mentally disturbed and on drugs, and she had needed to disarm him. In the process, she'd been slashed along her upper arm, a fairly glancing blow fortunately, but still it had been a sizeable gash from which she had a faint scar. It was the most serious injury Kate had ever received in the line of duty so far. She remembered the burning sensation of the knife slicing through her skin, remembered the blood soaking her uniform sleeve and her hand.

Later, when she had fully woken up to the agonizing pain of it in her arm, after the adrenaline of the scene had worn off, Kate had wondered if it was something similar to what her mom had felt. She supposed so. At the time, the thought had been strangely, weirdly comforting in a morbid way. She hadn't found her mother's killer, had been letting her mother down for more than four years, but at least she had some idea of what her mother had suffered. As atonement. Or something. Kate realized now that she had not been in the healthiest frame of mind at the time but it had been how she'd felt then.

She remembered too, although with the same mingled dismay, sympathy and grief, that the uniform who had been tasked with telling her dad what had happened hadn't known much about Kate's history beyond the fact that her mother had died. So he had broken the news to her dad with the words, "I'm very sorry to tell you this but your daughter has been stabbed." The uniform had been stricken with horror when her dad had immediately collapsed in a dead faint and it was only when he'd been revived that the uniform had been able to then reassure her dad that it wasn't serious and that she was going to make a full recovery.

Her dad had told her the story in broken tones. He had checked himself into an alcohol rehab facility the day after she was released from the hospital and started on the long, hard road to recovery. It had been, her dad had told her years later, a salutary shock to his system, breaking through the fog of drink that had clouded his mind for so long. The moment of thinking that he had lost her too and then, on finding out that he hadn't, realizing the stark, brutal reality that he might not have lost her but she had lost him for all intents and purposes since Johanna had died and if he continued on as he was, he would lose her in fact.

12 years. Dick Coonan might be dead, her mother's murder avenged, but with him had also died Kate's best chance of learning the reason why. _Why_ her mother had been murdered and _who_ had ordered her mother to be killed, who had really killed her mother.

Kate always told herself that finding out the answers, getting justice for her mother, would help—and she, of all people, knew that knowing why mattered after a crime had occurred. It helped. Learning the truth was something she owed to her mom, something she'd promised to find out, for her mom, who had been such an advocate of the importance of truth.

But on this day, all Kate could think was that even knowing the answers would not bring her mother back.

Her mother was gone and no matter what she did, she'd never be able to talk to her mom again, never hear her mother's voice or her laugh or see her smile. She would never feel her mom's hug again.

Kate finally got up out of bed, getting dressed, and then going out into the kitchen to make coffee.

She had taken the day off from work; she always took January 9 off or at least, she had as soon as she'd attained enough seniority to be able to make her own schedule. Captain Montgomery understood and she was thankful for that.

She wasn't hungry—she was never very hungry on this day—but she heard Castle's voice in her mind reminding her that breakfast was the most important meal of the day and she felt a faint smile curve her lips as she made herself some toast.

She was just finishing up her breakfast when she heard a knock on the door and frowned a little, wondering who it could be.

She checked quickly to make sure it wasn't obvious that she'd been crying for the better part of the morning before she approached the door. "Who is it?"

"Florists with a delivery for Katherine Beckett," came the answer, a very youthful-sounding voice.

Castle. It had to be from Castle.

Kate opened the door and the young man, who looked to be around college-age, looked up from his clipboard. "Katherine Beckett?"

"Yes," she confirmed.

"I have a delivery for you," he said, handing her, first, a small, pretty pot of pansies and then, somewhat to her surprise, a separate, large bouquet of colorful blooms.

She thanked him with a faint smile and then pushed the door closed with her foot before she set the flowers on the coffee table, sinking down on the couch to read the note she was sure she would find.

She easily recognized Castle's handwriting on the card tucked into the pot of pansies. _Pansies are also called hearts-ease. I hope these ease your heart today and going forward. Call me if you need anything. Love, Rick._ He had underlined the word _anything_ twice.

She smiled softly, her heart warming in her chest. Oh, Castle.

He had agreed so easily when she had told him a couple days ago that she was, as usual, taking today off from work and that she was going to spend the day alone, as she always did. He hadn't indicated by so much as the blink of an eye if he were at all hurt or disappointed by it, had only said quietly, "Whatever you want, Kate."

There was another card attached to the bouquet and when she read it, Kate felt a sob well up in her throat.

All that was written on the card was _For your mom._

Oh, she did love that man.

She retrieved her phone to send him a text message since she didn't feel like she could trust her voice with her throat still tight with tears. _Thank you for the flowers, Rick._ The simplest sentiment but she couldn't put all her emotions into words. And she thought—hoped—that he would be able to guess just how much the gesture meant to her from her use of his first name, since she only ever called him Rick in tender moments.

His response came almost immediately. _Anything you need, Kate. I'm here._

A tear dropped down onto her phone and she wiped it away, closing her eyes against the sting of more tears. She didn't cry often but this was the one day of the year she allowed herself to cry, to wallow in her emotions.

It was true, that time healed all wounds. Kate's grief over her mother was no longer quite as sharp and visceral as it had been in the first years. She understood that she would never get over her mom's death but as the years had passed, she had learned to carry her grief better. She was able to think about her mom, remember her mom, without the debilitating stab of loss.

But this anniversary always brought the grief back. The reminder of all the years that had passed, how much of Kate's life her mom had already missed—and all she would continue to miss.

Kate stared down at her mother's familiar tombstone, her gloved fingers wrapped around her mother's ring.

It was so stark, she always thought, the way the stone reduced her mother's entire life, her existence, only to her name, the bare facts of her dates of birth and death, with the only more personal touch being the Latin motto that had been her mother's personal guiding light.

Truth conquers all. And she wondered for about the millionth time how long it would take before she was able to discover the truth behind her mother's murder—if she ever did.

She mentally shook the bleak thought off. She _would_ find out the truth. She had to. She had seen enough of murders for hire to know that there was always a money trail; one just had to find it. Other records might be destroyed but financial records were not so easily destroyed because they were kept by banks and financial institutions whose record-keeping was impeccable.

She suddenly remembered what Castle had said to her when he had been trying to cajole her into forgiving him for looking into her mom's case more than a year ago. _But it's different this time. We have good leads. We have strong leads. And you won't have to do it alone. We can do it together._

And so they were.

They had already looked into Dick Coonan's life and his financial records with a fine-toothed comb. Unfortunately, all they had managed to discover was that Coonan—or whoever had hired him—was more cunning than many were so that the payments had not been of such large amounts as to be easily noticeable. They must have been divided into multiple, smaller payments that were much harder to track because they would not stick out on the voluminous financial records. They were looking for the ultimate needle in a hay stack. And their odds were not improved by how many years had passed since the payments would have been made. Kate knew that but she refused to give up. Could not give up.

She knelt and put Castle's flowers down on her mom's grave, pausing to brush a hand over the top of the stone to clear away some debris.

"Hi, Mom," she said quietly and then stopped. She rarely spoke aloud when she visited her mom's grave. She didn't believe that her mom could actually hear her and she knew, rationally, that talking aloud was more for her own comfort than anything else. But for all that, it _was_ a comfort at times, made her feel… closer to her mom.

"The flowers are from Castle. He's—I love him so much, Mom," she admitted, her voice lowering until it was barely above a whisper. "And I'm… happy… I thought… I sometimes thought I'd never be happy again but I am, I really am." She paused, managing the ghost of a smile as she thought of him. "He makes me happy."

He did, made her happier than she had really believed she could be after her mom had died. She had been content enough with her life before Castle had come along and she remembered assuring her dad that she was happy with her life as it was. And then Castle had insinuated himself into her work and her life. He had annoyed her, amused her, at times infuriated her, and attracted her (entirely against her will). And looking back now, she felt as if she'd been living her life in black and white and then she'd met Castle and suddenly her life had transformed into vivid, living color.

"I wish… I wish you could know him, Mom. He's—there's _more_ to him than even you thought from his books."

She sniffed and swiped at the tears welling in her eyes. Oh, she missed her mom. She wanted her mom to be able to meet Castle. Her mom would have loved Castle, she didn't doubt that, but she hated, so much, knowing that her mom would never get to meet Castle. That Castle would never get to meet her mom.

That her mom would not be able to see her marry Castle. Kate's eyes lowered to focus on her mom's ring—her mom's engagement ring. She had always known since her mom's death, rationally, that her mom would not be there for her own wedding but it had never had much impact. Of all that had happened in Kate's life that her mom had not been there for, as much as she missed her mom every day, her own wedding had been such a remote prospect, never much more than a hazy possibility in some distant day, that she had never really stopped to realize what it meant that her mom could not be there. Now, when she and Castle had, albeit somewhat obliquely, agreed that they both wanted to get married someday, the idea that her mom would not be there to see her get married made her chest ache.

"I want to marry him," she whispered, her heart fluttering wildly in her chest at admitting it aloud. If her mom had been alive, she would have been the first person Kate would have told when she started to think about marrying anyone, so it seemed right to somehow let her mom still be the first person she told.

She closed her eyes and she could picture her mom's smile, see the way her mom's expression would have softened with emotion, hear her mom's voice. _Oh, Katie-girl, I could have told you that months ago._ Kate choked on a sound that was half a laugh, half a sob. Yes, that was likely what her mom would have said. Her mom always had seemed to know these things before Kate herself did, would probably have started subtly (and not so subtly) hinting at marriage to Castle months ago.

"Oh, Mom, I miss you so much," she broke off abruptly, her voice failing her. The words seemed so lame, so utterly inadequate, to express her gaping sense of loss from her mom's death, the void left in her life.

It helped, more than Kate had realized was possible, to feel like she was part of a family again, to have Martha and Alexis and Castle. To be a part of the teasing warmth, the easy affection, that flowed so freely and so openly between all three of them and that now included Kate too. But for all that, there were times that being around the three of them also made the pain of losing her mom hurt _more_ because it reminded her of what her family had been like growing up, reminded her of all that she'd lost.

She had her dad back and she was thankful for that every day but this day, of all days in the year, she was always conscious of the brutal reality that it wasn't the same, could never be the same. Her mom would always be gone.

She didn't stay much longer at the cemetery, made her way slowly back to her car, feeling exhausted, drained, as she usually did after these visits.

Some time later, back at her apartment, Kate called her dad.

Her dad was the only person she ever saw on this anniversary when he was in the City but she knew the anniversary was hard on him, harder on him than it was even for her, and so the last couple years, her dad had taken to going up to his cabin for New Year's and staying until after the anniversary. New Year's Eve was another hard day for her dad because her parents had generally reserved New Year's Eve as a romantic evening for the two of them since in the last few years before her mom had died, Kate had always been out with friends to see in the New Year at various places in the City, including her senior year of high school when she and her friends had camped out in Times Square for the ball drop. The holiday had meant that her parents could use it as a date night, one on which they could both be certain that neither her dad's work or her mom's would intrude. Her parents had usually stayed in for New Year's, not wanting to fight crowds. Her mom had cooked or they had sometimes ordered food in and then they'd had a private, candlelit dinner at home, sometimes getting dressed up just for the fun of it. Kate remembered returning home after midnight to find her parents dancing, swaying together in the living room of their family apartment.

"Hi, Dad," she greeted him quietly when he answered the phone, his voice subdued as it always was on this day.

"Hi, Katie."

There was a momentary pause, silence humming over the line, so many emotions crowding in but left unspoken. These talks with her dad on the anniversary were always awkward, whether in person or over the phone, usually punctuated with long silences.

"I went to the cemetery," she finally said lamely, since her dad knew perfectly well that Kate always went to the cemetery on the anniversary.

Her dad gave a vague murmur of acknowledgment.

Another pause and then he asked, "Is Rick with you?"

Kate blinked, a little surprised at the question. Her dad knew she always spent this day alone. "No. No, he's not. He—he sent flowers though, for me and for Mom." Her voice cracked just a little on the last word.

"Rick didn't want to be with you today?" Her dad sounded faintly disapproving, for probably the first time in speaking about Castle.

"I… told him I needed space, Dad. You know I never see anyone but you today."

She had spent the anniversary alone when she'd been with Will too. Will had been aware of the date's significance—the only one among the scant few guys she'd dated since her mom's death who had known about the anniversary—but she'd told him she needed to be alone for it. And Will had agreed without comment, had only pressed a kiss to her forehead before he had left her the evening before, and he had given her space the entire day, not even contacting her once.

She heard her dad sigh. "Oh, Katie… I hate to think of you being alone today."

"You're alone today too," she responded quietly.

Her dad sighed again, heavily. "Katie-girl, it's… different. You're my daughter and I… I hate to think of you being alone when you're sad."

Kate opened her mouth to say that she was used to being alone when she was upset over anything but then stopped, biting back the words. It was true but not something she wanted to declare openly to her dad. She had never been very good about showing weakness before anyone even before her mom had died and her mom had been the one person who had always been able to comfort her, make her feel better. And when she'd lost her mom, she had lost that one sure source of comfort, her safe place when she was hurting.

Except… she wasn't alone anymore. She had Castle now. Castle, who could—and did—comfort her.

"I just… I don't know how not to be alone today," she admitted slowly, unevenly. It was the best way she could think of to explain it. Even knowing that being with Castle tended to help, make her feel better, it hadn't occurred to her to spend today with him. She knew he was there for her and she guessed that he was worried about her, although he hadn't said, but she had also trusted him to give her space today when she asked him. He might have a tendency to pry and push about other things but since the time she had forgiven him for looking into her mom's case, when it came to her mom, he didn't push. With anything related to her mom, he stepped carefully, gave her space. She remembered, again, what he'd said, promised, last year. _I will do anything that you need, including nothing, if that's what you want._

He had kept his promise.

But deciding to be alone today had not been about Castle.

Her grief over her mom, on this anniversary, was the most private, personal corner of her heart. This anniversary and the sorrow of it was _hers_ and her dad's, just as Johanna's death had been their loss, more than anyone else's.

"Today… has always been just for you and me, Dad, about what we lost…" she faltered.

"Oh, Katie… I can understand that but that doesn't mean you always need to be alone. Your mom wouldn't want that; I don't want that. We never wanted you to have to cry alone."

"I don't like to cry in front of people."

"You never have, Katie-girl, and I'm not about to push you or force you to do something you're not comfortable with but I just want to say…" he paused while Kate knew he was gathering his thoughts, "you and Rick are in a relationship, a serious relationship. I know you love him and he loves you."

He paused again while Kate felt herself flush. Her dad knew she loved Castle? Well, of course he did, but she hadn't admitted it to him in so many words, not yet. "I do love him," she admitted so quietly it was barely above a breath, her heart suddenly in her throat.

"It's part of what being in a serious relationship means. He should be the one you want to be with in the hardest times, the one you can comfort you when you're sad. Your mom… your mom was always that person for me," her dad went on, his voice trembling, lowering until she almost had to strain to hear him over the phone. "She was the person who could always get me through the bad times and I hope—I know I was that person for her." He broke off, his voice cracking, and finished unsteadily, "And I may never forgive myself for not being there for her at the end, when she must have needed me."

"Oh, Dad, no," Kate choked out through her tears, her chest aching at the pain in her dad's voice, the self-reproach in it. She had always hated that she and her dad hadn't sensed anything being wrong on the fatal day 12 years ago, that her mom had died alone. Had been haunted for years by the fact that she and her dad had been chatting idly and even laughing while her mom had been dying. She had blamed herself for it for years and it had taken months of therapy before she'd accepted that it wasn't her fault. She knew it wasn't her fault, rationally, but she couldn't help but feel guilty nonetheless.

There was a long silence and she heard some muffled sounds that she knew meant her dad had put the phone down so he could cry.

"I'm sorry, Katie," her dad finally managed to say in a voice that he vainly tried to keep steady.

"You don't have to apologize, Dad," she said softly. "I know."

"I just… what I wanted to say was that Rick should be the person who can get you through the hard times, the one who can comfort you when you're sad, and if he's not…"

"He is," Kate whispered, having to force the words out past the lump in her throat.

There was a pause and she knew her dad had heard her confession.

"I don't like to think of you being alone today, Katie," her dad told her again. "You shouldn't have to be alone. Rick loves you. Let him comfort you."

"I'll… think about it, Dad."

"Say hello to Rick for me."

"I will," she whispered, hoping that the softness of her voice would mean that her dad wouldn't be able to tell that she was crying.

"I'll call once I get back to the City and we can meet up."

"Okay."

"I love you, Katie-bug."

"Love you too." Kate barely managed to force the words out and she was only thankful that her dad ended the call then because she couldn't hold back her sobs any longer, her dad's use of the old childish moniker somehow serving as the last straw.

She broke down in tears, her entire body shaking with the force of her sobs, as she cried in a way she almost never did. And she couldn't have even said why she was crying so hard. It was just… everything…

Her hands trembled slightly as she fumbled with her phone and managed to send a text message to Castle. Oddly, in that moment, she didn't even think that she was, after all, taking her dad's advice. In that moment, somehow, he was all she could think of.

 _I need you._

She had no clear sense of time passing but she could only guess, later, that he must have left the loft immediately on receiving her text and then bribed a cab driver to get him to her apartment in record time because it seemed like no time at all—her tears had still not stopped although the sobs had slowed—before she heard his knock on the door followed by his voice through the door. "Kate?"

She had only just stood up before her door opened, Castle apparently not having the patience to wait before using his key, and then he was rushing inside.

"Oh, Kate," he breathed and she barely had time to take a breath before he was there, picking her up bodily in his arms and cradling her rather like a child before he sat down on the couch with her in his lap. And then he just held her, surrounding her with his strength and his warmth.

Kate buried her face in the collar of his coat, the space where his neck met his shoulder, one arm curling around his shoulder, as she cried herself out until her tears dried up. And then she just rested against him, breathing in his familiar scent, and finally becoming aware of his occasional comforting murmurs. "I'm here, Kate. You're not alone."

"I'm sorry," she sniffled after a little while, her voice muffled.

He tightened his arms around her. "Don't apologize, sweetheart. It's okay to cry."

"I got your coat wet," she mumbled.

"It'll dry."

There was a pause and then, "Did you just call me sweetheart?"

She felt him press a kiss to her hair. "I guess I did. Do you mind?"

She considered it, her mind a little sluggish, heavy, as if it, too, were waterlogged. She wasn't really someone who liked pet names in general; her dad was the only person who ever used a pet name for her. And she would have said that she wouldn't allow anyone else to use a pet name but maybe it was that she was more vulnerable than usual today but whatever it was, she found she didn't mind. Not from him.

"Just not in front of anyone else," she murmured equably.

"So I shouldn't call you honey-bun or sugar-lips in the precinct?" he teased, his voice gentle.

She choked on a shaky laugh. "If you do, I will shoot you," she told him, with the first, faint thread of her usual Beckett steel in her voice.

"Duly noted."

She lifted her head to kiss his jaw before settling her head against his shoulder again. He stayed silent, just moved one hand up and down her spine in a gentle, soothing caress.

She found herself remembering something she had almost forgotten about, the first time she had ever seen her dad cry. She had been young, about eight or so, and she vaguely remembered hearing that an old school friend of her dad's had been killed in an accident but it hadn't meant much to her in her childish, self-centered mind. But then later that night, she had woken up and snuck out of bed and then had frozen in the hallway just where she could see her parents sitting on the couch. Her dad had been hunched over, his elbows on his knees, and then she'd seen him lift one hand to wipe at his face and realized with a terrible shock that her dad was crying—she still remembered the shock because up until then, it had never occurred to her child's mind that grown-ups cried too. Her mom had been sitting next to him, her arm around his shoulders. She had heard the soft murmur of her mom's voice but hadn't been able to actually hear the words. But then after a moment, she'd seen her dad's head fall so he was leaning against her mom's shoulder. That was the last thing she saw before she'd quietly snuck back to her own room.

The memory of that tender scene returned to her now, brought back by what her dad had said about how her mom had been the person who could comfort him. It was true, although it was something her dad had never before put into so many words. And it made it painfully, poignantly clear to Kate yet again just how much her dad had lost when her mom had died, why her dad had found it so hard to recover. Cruel and tragic that Johanna might have been the one person who would have been able to comfort her father at that lowest point of his life when it was her very loss that had left him so bereft.

She was used to being alone for this anniversary and although she was trying, her first instinct was still to hide away in solitude when she was upset or vulnerable. But as she sat curled up on Castle's lap, with his arms around her, she had to admit that being with Castle today, being held like this by him, made things easier. Somehow, being in Castle's arms made the pain of missing her mom hurt less.

This was part of what she needed to do in taking down her wall, letting him comfort her on this saddest day of the year.

And although some part of her felt as if she shouldn't let herself be comforted on this anniversary when she still had not managed to get justice for her mother, she also knew that it would be a futile gesture of atonement or martyrdom and one her mom would not want.

Her dad had been right. Her mom would never have wanted her to cry alone.

"My dad says hello," she murmured.

"How is he? He's still at his cabin?"

"Yes and he's… grieving."

He sighed a little. "I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine…"

She sniffed and felt yet more tears pricking at the back of her eyes at the thought of her dad's anguish. "I was mad at him for a long time," she mumbled. "But I… understand better now what my dad lost when my mom died and I think… it was unfair of me to be so angry at him."

"Kate, you were so young, you can't blame yourself for being angry. I know your dad would say the same thing. Learning more empathy for our parents is part of becoming a real adult, I think."

She lifted her head enough to meet his eyes. "I understand better now because now I… think I know what it's like to love someone the way Dad loved Mom."

His eyes briefly closed as he let out a breath. "Oh, Kate…" he breathed and her name sounded almost like a prayer. He moved one hand to touch her cheeks so lightly, as if he were touching a miracle. No one had ever touched her or looked at her the way he was right now. And then he bent his head and brushed his lips against hers in a tender kiss. And that, too, was like no other kiss she had ever received.

Afterwards, she nestled more snugly into him, rather amazed at how content she was to be sitting in his lap like this. She hadn't sat in anyone's lap in years, not since she'd been a child. And on a normal day, when her Detective Beckett persona was in place, it probably would have made her feel restless. But today, it felt… right.

Castle resettled his arms around her comfortably. There was a long silence and Kate felt herself drift into a state of something like somnolence, not quite asleep but not fully alert either.

The silence was broken—mortifyingly—by her stomach rumbling and Kate clamped a hand over her stomach, feeling herself blush.

Castle laughed softly, affectionately. "Kate, did you eat anything today?"

"Yes," she answered half-defiantly, half-petulantly. "I had breakfast."

"But no lunch," he filled in, the faintest trace of reproach in his voice although it was mostly drowned out with understanding. "I'll order some food for us. What do you feel like?"

She straightened up, lifting her chin slightly, although she knew the effect was ruined by the fact that she was still sitting on his lap. "I can order my own food, Castle."

"Indulge me."

He said it with a small smile but she could also hear the trace of emotion in his voice, his need to take care of her, and she gave in with a faint smile and a nod. "Okay. Chinese, then."

He did love to take care of the people he loved and she knew she was lucky to be one of them so yes, she could let him do these little things for her and appreciate that Castle's wanting to take care of her was carefully limited so he never let it interfere with her work.

She slid off his lap so he could stand up and then smiled irresistibly when he bent and dropped a light, playful kiss on the tip of her nose. He could always lift her heart, couldn't he? How could she ever have thought to get through this hardest of days without him? She knew she could; she had for the last 11 years before this but now, she didn't have to and she understood now that it wasn't a sign of weakness to accept help. And as her dad had said, her mom would not have wanted her to be alone.

She let him order, trusting that he knew what she wanted (but then again, Castle had not only memorized her Chinese order but also her favorite kind of pizza and guessed her preferred flavor of milkshake, to say nothing of the way he'd noted how she took her coffee, back when they were still just friends. He noticed things and he remembered them, at least for the people he cared about.)

The food arrived and they ate in companionable silence and it could have been any other evening. She stole half of his egg roll as she habitually did and he pulled a face at her but by this point, she knew that he would be secretly disappointed if she didn't steal half his egg roll. He might pretend to pout but he also never ordered an egg roll for her either, which gave him away.

Afterwards, she took out the album of family photos from her dad and then curled up next to him.

She'd never shared her family photos with anyone before but it felt right to show them to him now.

He curled his arm around her and she leaned into him as she opened up the album.

Only to rather wish she hadn't as she'd forgotten that one of the first pictures her dad had included in the album was one of her as a toddler, her face screwed up to scream.

"Ah, the Beckett stubbornness, I recognize that look," Castle teased gently.

She elbowed him in the side but couldn't quite help but smile. "Shut up, Castle."

But then they both sobered at the next picture of a youthful Johanna cracking up with laughter over something while sitting on a picnic blanket next to a very young-looking Jim, also laughing.

Kate blinked back tears. She was always struck when she looked at these old family pictures by how much her father's face had aged, not so much with the passage of years, although the passage of nearly two decades obviously had left their mark, but the toll left by the devastation of her mom's death. It was as if her dad had somehow physically shrunk, become smaller, the lines in his face, the way his eyes had sunken in. It was easier to see the difference in her dad's features in the pictures than it was in person because it had happened gradually.

"Your mom was beautiful," Castle murmured.

"Yeah, she was," Kate agreed softly. She could see her own resemblance to her mom but to Kate's mind, her mom was prettier than Kate had ever been. A picture couldn't capture the real radiance of her mom's smile sometimes, the way it had lit up her face and her eyes. When her mom had smiled at her in a certain way, Kate had felt as if nothing bad could happen, as if tragedy could not coexist in a world with her mom's smile—only to have her childish belief brutally ended along with the last of her innocence when her mom had died. She sniffed and wiped away the tears blurring her vision and felt Castle kiss her hair, his arm tightening around her.

"I wish I could have met her," he said quietly.

Kate stirred, reminded of something. "I should show you something."

She stood up and went into the study/library and retrieved the item from the bookshelf.

She settled back on the couch and he immediately slipped his arm around her again, bringing her in against him.

" _A Season for Slaughter_?" he repeated the title with some surprise and confusion.

"Open it."

He did, paging through it until he got to the title page—and found his own handwriting. _To Johanna. Thanks for reading. Richard Castle._

He turned to gape at her. "Kate… I… your mom came to a signing? I met her?"

She shook her head slowly, regretfully. She had never regretted what had happened that day years ago as much as she did now when it meant that her mom never had met Castle. "No, but she'd been planning to go. The signing was going to be at the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center which was fairly close to my mom's work so she had arranged to leave work an hour or so early so she could go to the signing on her way home. She was so excited that morning that my dad and I both laughed at her." Kate managed a small smile at the memory of her mom's excitement.

"Your mom liked my books that much?" He sounded amazed.

Kate gave him a smile. "Yes, she did. She was looking forward to meeting you because she said your books convinced her that you were compassionate and had a good sense of humor." At another time, she might have been reluctant to feed Castle's ego by saying such a thing but today, she wasn't. And her decision was vindicated by the expression on his face, looking humbled, as if he could hardly believe it. She was reminded what even now she found herself forgetting more than half the time, that Castle's egotism and little vain statements concealed more insecurity than anyone who didn't know him very well would believe.

"You said I didn't meet her. What happened?"

"Something came up at work so instead of being able to leave early, it turned out she needed to work late. She didn't even make it home in time for dinner that day and she called my dad to let him know and my dad… Well, he knew how much my mom had been looking forward to it so he asked his assistant if she could stop off at the signing on her way home from work instead because it was on the way for her and she did. So my dad gave my mom this signed copy the next day as a surprise. My mom loved it." Kate smiled a little at the memory of how her mom had beamed and grabbed her dad and given him a sound kiss in thanks. A teenage Kate had been disgusted but now, Kate remembered it with a smile.

"I didn't think you had a copy of this book," he said quietly. "I remember noticing that you didn't have it on your bookshelves the night I stayed over at your old apartment."

She elbowed him lightly, although she wasn't surprised to hear it. "What were you doing, snooping through my bookshelves?"

He yelped and gave her a look of mock reproach. "I wasn't snooping. Your bookshelves were out in plain view. Besides," he added, his voice and his expression softening, "I always wanted to know more about you and you can learn a lot about a person from their bookshelves."

"What did you learn about me?"

"That you can read books in the original Russian—which is really hot, by the way—and that you had almost all of my books."

She bit her lip but a smile escaped anyway. "I did have all of your books." She had, only to have almost all of them destroyed in the explosion. "This one was in my car at the time. That's why I still have it."

She didn't really believe in Fate but the fact that she had randomly decided to reread _A Season for Slaughter_ and had brought it with her when she'd had a doctor's appointment for her annual physical a week or so before the whole Dunn case had started, which had saved the book Castle had signed for her mom from the explosion, was almost enough to make her believe. She had been so thankful, afterwards, when she'd remembered that this book had been spared. This one of his books—and one other one—she still had from her old collection of Castle's books and they were some of the most precious things she had.

"I'm glad you didn't lose it, Kate."

She let out a shaky breath. "Yeah, me too." She managed a rather wobbly smile for him and then turned her attention back to the photo album.

He smiled at a picture of her with a gap-toothed smile and her hair in pigtails. He touched a finger to one of her pigtails. "Nice pigtails, perfect for pulling on."

She managed a small smile at the reference. "Yeah."

He laughed softly while she bit her lip in some sheepishness at a picture of a teenaged Kate in what she mentally called her rebel Becks look, dressed all in black, her hair dyed black, and with too-heavy and too-dark make-up staring at the camera with a defiant look on her face that screamed, more than anything, that she was being photographed against her will.

"Looking good, Beckett," he teased mildly.

"My parents hated that phase. That was when I got my tattoo."

The next picture was from her high school graduation, Kate in her cap and gown and flanked by her beaming parents.

"Your hair—it's brown again," Castle commented. "And you're not in your goth makeup."

She smiled slightly. "Yeah, my parents and I had a big argument over me dying my hair back to its natural shade for my graduation and finally, I gave in but I wasn't happy about it." She paused. "I later managed to use my giving in to get their permission to get my motorcycle that summer."

"Rebel Becks riding her cool wheels."

"Yeah," she agreed softly. "I was a real brat during that phase. I tried cigarettes, broke my curfew, snuck out to college parties and drank alcohol, dated a grunge rocker my parents detested. The usual teenager stuff, I guess."

"If that's the usual teen stuff, I am never letting Alexis leave the house again," he commented.

"Alexis isn't a usual teen, Castle."

"Thank goodness for that," he said with devout relief.

She smiled but then sobered again as she admitted softly, "I was still rebelling in college and then Mom… and then I just stopped…" She had, the rebellious streak in her vanishing as if it had never been in the space of the one day that had changed her entire life.

"I can understand that. There's not much point to rebelling or acting out when there's no one to rebel against," he said softly.

That was it exactly, although she had not stopped to analyze it in such terms. She had been too devastated with grief and then she had tried not to think about those first years afterwards, the worst years, and when everything else in her life had changed so drastically, it had only seemed natural that her behavior had changed along with it.

She sniffed a little and attempted a wobbly smile. "That's such a mature thing to say, Castle. When did you grow up so much?"

"I don't know but I think it started when I met this tall, beautiful woman, who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, thinks she can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but still manages to laugh at some of my jokes. She let me follow her around and pull her pigtails and somewhere in all that, she made me a better man."

Tears welled up in her eyes again even as she couldn't quite help but smile. "She sounds like a handful."

He heaved an exaggerated, beleaguered sigh. "Yes, she can be a lot of trouble and she drives me crazy sometimes."

She poked him in the side and he squirmed away from her, capturing her prodding finger in his hand, and added, his voice abruptly serious, "She's also been the best influence for good in my entire life, along with Alexis, and I can't thank her enough."

Oh, damn, he really was going to make her cry. A sob caught in her throat and she turned to kiss him. "You were always a good man, Rick, I didn't do anything. And you've done so much for me."

He cupped her cheek with his hand. "Why don't we just agree that we're even in what we've done for each other?"

She couldn't quite believe that they really were even. He had given her hope again, taught her to look forward to the future, made her happier than she'd believed she would ever be again, and his faith in her gave her strength to try to be what he already believed she was. But she didn't want to argue with him either. "Okay," she agreed quietly and then kissed him again, tenderly.

They looked through the rest of the pictures in the album, pictures that ended rather abruptly after the last Christmas before Johanna had died and then there was nothing until a photo of an unsmiling Kate, looking gaunt and thin, in cap and gown as she graduated college.

Kate touched a finger to the picture, sighing. "I was so miserable that day. I didn't even want to go to the ceremony but I thought it might… help… my dad somehow, I don't even know how, maybe remind him we were still family or something." Her voice wavered, becoming softer. "It didn't help. We made it through the ceremony but we were both miserable and we knew it and it just… fell apart and I'd already been accepted into the Academy and my dad wasn't happy about that either so… it was just miserable."

It had been; it had been one of the worst days for both her and her dad since her mom's death. She didn't mention the terrible argument she and her dad had had over her applying to the Academy; she'd never spoken of that argument with anyone, including her own dad, afterwards and she fully expected never to speak of it again. Ironically, or not, Kate's graduation from college had ended up marking the beginning of the distance that had started to grow between her and her dad, a distance exacerbated by her dad's struggles with alcoholism and her choice of career. She pushed the memories away; that was all in the past. She and her dad had made up for all that; they had talked together, cried together, healed together, and in all that, had managed to rebuild their relationship.

"I'm so sorry. I don't know how you did it, got through all that. You're so strong, Kate, the strongest person I've ever met."

She turned into his embrace, her arm going around him. "I survived because I had to, that was all." She had put everything she had into becoming a cop and then working her way up the ranks until she made it to the Homicide division, letting everything else fall behind. She had lost touch with friends except for the ones she made at work—thank goodness for Lanie and then Esposito and Ryan—let Will leave for Boston and moved on with her life, her heart bruised but not broken. And she realized now how alone she had been, how lonely.

She wasn't alone anymore.

She nestled more snugly into his embrace and let her eyes close, feeling peace and comfort settle over her.

She only realized she must have dozed off when she woke up to Castle gently nudging her. "Kate, you should go to bed."

"Mm, okay," she mumbled.

He helped her stand up and then slid his arm beneath her knees and lifted her up.

"Castle, I can walk," she protested weakly.

"Indulge me in my moment of macho masculinity," he joked lightly.

She made a faint huff that was almost a snort. At any other time, she would have made a snarky comment but she was drained and exhausted, her brain still muzzy from sleep, so for once she let him get away with saying such a thing and let her head fall against his shoulder as he carried her into her bedroom and laid her on her bed.

She caught his hand as he stood up. "Will you stay?"

He bent and kissed her temple. "Of course I'm staying."

"Alexis will be okay?"

His expression softened as he turned back to her from stripping off his pants. "My mother's with her. I told them I'd be staying here tonight."

Thus reassured, she let her eyes close again and relaxed into her bed, hearing the soft sounds of him washing up for the night, until she felt him slide into bed beside her, the heat and strength of his body curling around her.

She shifted and nestled in closer against him.

"Mm, Castle, love you," she mumbled.

His response was little more than a breath against her ear, punctuated by the softest of butterfly kisses on the delicate skin just behind her ear lobe. "I love you too, Kate. Always."

 _Always._ She smiled slightly as she drifted into sleep, knowing he was there.

* * *

Castle propped his head on his arm and settled in to one of his favorite past-times, looking at Beckett. Creepy staring, as she called it in the times when she woke up and caught him out.

It was still too early for him to feel sleepy but he guessed that Kate must have woken up even earlier than she normally did on this sad day. There were shadows under her eyes and she was paler than usual, looked a little drawn. But she was still, always, beautiful— _his_ beautiful Kate.

His throat felt tight with emotion as he watched her sleep, his free hand stroking her hair lightly so as not to disturb her. And he thought he had never loved her more than he did today, when she had let him comfort her, shared more about her past and her family than he could have imagined she would.

He had thought, believed, that they would really be able to make it because he knew her, knew how driven and determined she was, and when Kate Beckett committed to something, she would never give up. And amazing as it still seemed to him, she was committed to him, to _them_. He knew she still didn't find it easy to talk about her mother or her past, the things that meant the most to her, and he understood. And even so, she was more affectionate, more giving, more… loving, than even he had imagined she would be and he just loved her, loved spending time with her, loved being with her. But today, the difference, the extent to which she had succeeded in lowering her wall, had been starkly apparent and he was amazed and so moved he was surprised he'd been able to speak at all.

She had let him comfort her, let him in on this day when she was the most vulnerable. He'd hated to see her tears, every one seeming to pierce his chest as if with a blade (a very bad metaphor, under the circumstances, a corner of his mind interjected). Seeing Beckett break down like that had seemed… wrong, as if he was seeing something that shouldn't happen in nature, but for all that, her tears had also been so precious, so painfully poignant to him.

He was—or was learning to be—too wise in the ways of Beckett to think that she would have ever let anyone else comfort her on this day before. Beckett didn't show weakness or vulnerability before anyone, really—except for him, now. She had reached out to him, sought his comfort, when she was crying—and that meant everything.

He shifted and reached out for his phone, pulling up the text message she had sent him earlier, the one that had had him rushing out of the loft after barely pausing to tell Alexis he was leaving.

 _I need you._

No words had ever meant more to him, not even hearing Kate say that she loved him. He moved his fingers to take a screenshot of the message, wanting to save it, but then paused, stopped. A screenshot of the message implied that he didn't really expect Kate to say those words again, seemed to imply a lack of faith in their relationship, in _her_. That he would need to save a picture of the message as a bulwark against any future doubts.

No.

He put his phone away.

Kate loved him. She _trusted_ him. She, who had been hurt so much in the past, had been betrayed so much, who was always quick to doubt. But somehow, incredibly, she trusted him.

And he couldn't doubt that, couldn't doubt her. He believed in her, believed in her commitment to their relationship, the way he believed in his love for Alexis, the way he believed in gravity and the sun rising in the east. As a fundamental fact of his existence. And if for some reason, his faith in her was ever broken, he realized now that it would be like having the very ground beneath his feet ripped away, would shake the very bedrock of his life, leaving him bereft, broken.

It was terrifying to realize just how much he needed her—but for the first time, he really believed that, incredible as it seemed to him, Kate Beckett needed him too, maybe even as much as he needed her.

Kate stirred and let out a little huff of breath and he returned his gaze to her so-dear, so-familiar features.

His Kate.

She was, he thought, the last person he wanted to see when he closed his eyes every night, the first person he wanted to see every morning.

He wanted her to be his "third time's the charm," as she'd said—and for the first time in the few days since she'd said the words, the future with Kate he'd been dreaming about for almost a year now felt… not just possible but so real it was almost tangible. It should have been strange, somehow, to feel so much more certain about their relationship on what was such a sad day for Kate—and he did feel a little nagging sense of unease, even guilt, over it—but it was true. He knew Kate and the way she had asked for his comfort, the way she had talked to him, shared so much of her past with him, told him more than even her words about how much she trusted him, loved him.

She had said _someday_ …

And today, lying next to Kate in her bed, guarding her sleep as it were, he could only think that it was time to start looking at rings.

And this time, he really believed with every beat of his hopeful, optimistic heart, would be forever.

 _~To be continued…~_

A/N 2: Thank you, everyone, who's read, reviewed, followed, or added this fic to their favorites. I appreciate it so much.

Coming up next, "Poof, You're Dead."


	12. Chapter 11: Poof! You're Dead 1

Author's Note: Getting back to the episode-related chapters with the first of two chapters from 3x12 "Poof, You're Dead." I ended up needing to split the chapter up because it was getting way too long (again). As usual, some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 11_

Kate was having a lazy Saturday morning as she curled up on one of the stools at the kitchen island in the loft and sipped her coffee while skimming through the newspaper.

She heard the faint sound of the shower shutting off and knew Castle would be emerging soon. She felt a small, rather sappy smile curving her lips at the thought of him—with the memory of the night before still fresh in her mind.

Only to have her smile vanish and her mood take a turn to the worse as she turned the page on the paper and saw a picture of Castle right beside one of Gina.

 _It looks like best-selling mystery author Richard Castle, known as much for his exploits with women as for his popular novels, might be rekindling his relationship with his publisher and ex-wife, the beautiful Gina Cowell. The two were seen at Le Cirque last night having what looked to be a romantic dinner for two and at one point, the author appeared to be gazing lovingly into her eyes. Mr. Castle has most recently been romantically linked with the inspiration for his latest best-selling Nikki Heat series, NYPD Detective Kate Beckett, but if last night's display was any indication, it looks like the famously love-them-and-leave-them author is moving on._

Kate frowned, feeling all the contentment of the morning vanishing, suddenly feeling a little cold inside. She knew perfectly well that the article was nonsense. She _did_ know it.

Yesterday's dinner had been a business dinner scheduled by Black Pawn. Castle hadn't been particularly thrilled about it—he didn't like business meetings to begin with but he liked them even less when they prevented him from being home for dinner with Alexis—and when Castle had been done pouting over it to her, he had cajoled her into coming over to the loft yesterday evening so they could still spend the night together. Not that he'd needed to try very hard to persuade her.

And after the night they had just had, she could hardly doubt Castle's desire for her or his love.

And yet… The article disturbed her. Not because she believed anything about it but because it was a stark reminder that this sort of thing was an inevitable part of being with Castle, the consequences of his fame, his reputation, and his past. And she just… didn't like it.

While she wasn't displeased that, as Castle had predicted, media interest in her and Castle's relationship had dwindled to the point that no one either knew or cared that she and Castle were still very much together, she was not at all happy about having her name, her private life, mentioned in the paper like this. She detested the very idea of people speculating about the state of her personal life, her relationship with Castle.

And yes, a tiny corner of her that she tried not to acknowledge didn't like the reminder that Castle had been married twice before. It wasn't jealousy; she couldn't put a word to the emotion except that sometimes, in the rare times the thought crept into her mind, it just… bothered her. The reminder that she and Castle were, in many ways, at very different places in their lives. Castle had raised a child already (Alexis might still be a minor and living at home but she was, as Castle fretted almost daily, growing up very quickly); Castle had already been married, had made vows to love and cherish twice before to two other women. She told herself she was being irrational and unfair because she had, after all, known about Castle's past from the beginning. And yet… Castle was her one and done—and sometimes, as much as she tried not to think about it, tried not to let it bother her, she found herself wishing that she could have been his one and done too.

Her gaze returned to the paper, to the end—"it looks like the famously love-them-and-leave-them author is moving on." Love-them-and-leave them. She knew it was nonsense but something about the phrase, the reminder of Castle's past, brought her insecurities creeping back into her mind. Castle might be happy with her now, might love her now—but would it last? He'd been married twice before and must have believed both those times that he was in love and that it would last. She knew what she and Castle had was different—she _did_ —but her insecurities were not so easily forgotten. If anything, she sometimes felt her insecurities seemed more stubborn because she loved him so much and loving him made her vulnerable.

Could she really be enough for him— _she_ , Kate Beckett, with all her issues, her emotional reticence, all the darkness and death in her life? What if he got tired of having to push past her wall, got tired of dealing with her neediness and vulnerability when it came to her mother?

He _deserved_ to be with someone who could fill his life with all the joy and happiness that he seemed to give to others so effortlessly. Deserved to be with someone who wasn't haunted by the unsolved murder of her mother, who wasn't damaged and needy and so fearful at times. Someone who didn't have defensive walls that still made it hard for her to open up about the things that mattered most.

She tried to tell herself she was being silly, even paranoid. How could she doubt him, doubt their relationship, after the last night, the last seven months of being with him? How could she question the strength of his love for her after the way he had comforted her last week on the anniversary of her mom's death? But for all that, the niggling insecurities whispered in the back of her mind.

She was pulled from her thoughts as she sensed Castle's presence behind her as he emerged from his office and his bedroom. She turned and managed a smile for him, a brighter one than she might have normally greeted him with in an attempt to deny her doubts and insecurities. "Morning, Castle."

"Good morning," he half-mumbled, running a hand down his face in the somewhat uncoordinated way he had when he was still trying to shake off his sleepiness, before his first coffee of the morning. Her heart warmed and melted a little; she had never admitted it to him but she found him kind of adorable in the mornings when he was still trying to wake up. He wasn't a morning person, his movements a little slower than usual in the mornings before he'd had his coffee, and she found it endearing for reasons she couldn't entirely explain.

He dropped an absent-minded kiss on her hair before he busied himself preparing his coffee the way he liked it, his morning routine so familiar to her by now, and looking at him, she felt her mood lifting, her doubts receding in the reality of his presence, his ease with her. This was Castle, _her_ Castle, and whatever he might have done in the past, he loved her now and at that moment, that was enough.

And she certainly knew she had nothing to worry about when it came to Gina.

"So, did you have a nice evening last night?" she asked with faux seriousness.

He blinked and gave her an odd look. "It was a very nice night." He gave her a smirk, some of his usual smugness appearing now that he was more awake. "Do I need to refresh your memory of it?"

"I was talking about your 'romantic dinner for two' at Le Cirque."

"My what?"

She passed him the paper, keeping her expression carefully neutral.

He skimmed it quickly, frowning, and then looked up at her. "It was a business dinner! Black Pawn scheduled it! And Gina insisted on Le Cirque because she likes to be seen in places like that. Gina and I were talking about new Derrick Storm books. She hasn't forgiven me for killing off Derrick in the first place and she's been trying to make me write new Storm books since she read the draft of _Storm Fall_."

She bit her lip to keep from smiling at his nervous babbling since he had told her about the possibility of bringing back Derrick Storm already (and she had needed to hide her rather fan-girl-y excitement at the idea). "So you weren't 'gazing lovingly into her eyes'?" she teased mildly.

"No! She asked me to check if there was anything stuck in her teeth. This is all wrong! They should know better than to publish such nonsense."

She gave in and laughed at his petulant expression. "Well, just so you know, Castle, I'm not done with you yet so don't even think about moving on."

He moved around the island to slide his arms around her waist, dipping his head to kiss her neck. "I'll never want to move on from you, Beckett."

Her heart warmed at his words, even as she tilted her head with a breathy little sigh to give him greater access, feeling the tingles of pleasure sizzle out along her nerve endings from every spot his lips touched. God, she didn't know how he did it but the physical attraction between them never faded; if anything, his touch affected her _more_ now than it ever had before. And she thought fuzzily that she couldn't imagine ever really wanting another man again. Castle had ruined her for anyone else.

His tongue flicked out to lick her ear lobe and then he grazed it lightly with his teeth and she gasped before turning on the stool so she could slide her arms around his neck and bring his lips to hers.

She was just beginning to feel her mind go deliciously blank, focusing only on him, when she was abruptly yanked back to reality at the sound of her phone ringing.

"Mm, don't answer that," he mumbled against her lips.

She kissed him again, quickly, as she reached for her phone and then reluctantly had to push him gently away. "It's Dispatch. Beckett," she answered, her voice coming out more curtly than it normally would in an attempt to hide her breathlessness.

She listened and then repeated the address they gave her. "All right, thanks. I'll be right there."

She turned back to him with a rueful face. "We have a case, Castle."

He gave a beleaguered sigh. "Okay, but promise me we'll get back to that later?"

She couldn't help but laugh and gave him another kiss, lingering for just a shade longer than she maybe should have. "Count on it."

He finished gulping down his coffee while she retrieved her gun from his safe and then they were out the door.

"So where is the crime scene this time?"

She repeated the address, something niggling in the back of her mind about it.

"Why does that address sound so familiar?" he asked rhetorically. "I have a feeling I know that address."

"That's funny, Castle, so do I, but I can't remember why."

He repeated the address in a musing tone. "I know I know that address… Maybe it's on the same block as a restaurant I like? Bother, that's going to annoy me."

"Oh come on, Castle, we're heading right there so we'll figure it out soon enough."

And so they did when they got within a few blocks of the place, the memories starting to return to her.

"It's Drake's Magic Shop!" they blurted out in messy unison and then turned to look at each other. "You know about Drake's Magic Shop?"

They both laughed as she found a spot and parked. Oh, wow, a murder at Drake's Magic Shop. Fond memories rushed into her mind from growing up, tinged with wistfulness. She'd had such fun here…

"I love this place," Castle was explaining gleefully. "I've been coming here since I was 13 years old. This place is a paradise for boys. Whoopee cushions, magic tricks, fake vomit."

She laughed. Trust Castle to go for whoopee cushions and fake vomit. "It's not just for boys, Castle. My grandfather was an amateur magician and I used to come here almost every Sunday afternoon when I was that age too."

He turned to stare at her, a rather incredulous smile tugging at his lips. "I never pegged you for a magic fan."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Oh really? And why's that?"

He lifted one shoulder into a half-shrug. "Because you're… you."

She threw him a teasing smirk. "Well, that clears things up. Care to try again?"

"You're Detective Skeptical. You're rational and don't believe in things like aliens or ghosts or anything supernatural. I don't see why magic would be any different."

"Not believing in actual magic is different than magic tricks like what Drake's has, though. Magic tricks are all about misdirection and deception; it's clever and fun and a lot of it is really ingenious."

He nodded. "Good point." He tossed her a teasing look. "So, you know any good tricks?"

She smirked and gave him a deliberate look beneath her lashes. "I do this one thing. With ice cubes."

And saw the reaction flare in his eyes and expression before she turned lightly away, going into the shop.

He caught up with her, as she'd known he would. "So, any chance you could demonstrate this trick for me, Beckett?" he asked insinuatingly.

She pretended to think about it. "Maybe, if I feel like it."

"I'll persuade you," he husked into her ear just before they reached Lanie, standing by the water tank and the corpse.

She bit her lip to keep from smiling—oh, she knew what his persuasion was like and she was going to enjoy every second of it—but then immediately sobered as she looked at what had used to be Zalman Drake, owner of Drake's Magic Shop.

* * *

It was starting to look more and more like Zalman Drake had given in to temptation and gotten involved in a criminal conspiracy that had led to his death. Nerve agents and C-4 and being paid a fortune to get away with murder?

Kate, Castle, and Ryan stared at the murder board trying to come to terms with all the information they had found out. Esposito had already left, saying he had some errands to run, and Kate made a mental note that she and Lanie needed to have a girls' night out soon so she could grill Lanie about Espo since it was starting to look like that relationship was actually going somewhere. She knew that Lanie and Esposito had started to move closer, flirting more, in the last few months, and she guessed, although she hadn't asked Lanie about it directly, that Lanie and Esposito had probably been in something of a friends-with-benefits situation for at least a couple months now but with the last couple days, Lanie being all dressed up yesterday and now Esposito disappearing early tonight, the evidence was pointing towards Lanie and Espo being in a real relationship now to go on so many dates in as many days. She was glad of it. Lanie found it hard to date, in spite of her undeniable looks, because it was hard to find men who understood about her job since a lot of men found the idea of a medical examiner's job to be creepy or worse, for the weird fetishists out there, exciting. (Kate had encountered some of that herself since many men were immediately intimidated or creeped out on finding out that she was a homicide detective but being a ME was even worse in that respect.)

"Do you really think someone would hire a magician to help them get away with murder?" Ryan wondered aloud.

Kate could understand his reaction. Magicians didn't exactly leap immediately to mind when it came to criminal conspiracies. But on the other hand… "I mean, it's brilliant, really," she pointed out. "Magicians are masters at misdirection. If they can manipulate audiences, they can manipulate witnesses. They could even make people testify to things that never happened." It could be the formula for the perfect murder, the one every cop feared.

"It's just so hard to believe that a person with that much respect for magic would use his skills to kill," Castle commented. Yes, she knew that would bother Castle. He, who still tried so hard to believe the best about people.

"He needed to save his shop. And a half a million dollar payday was too good to be true," Kate said reasonably.

"And it was. Instead of a payday, he got whacked," was Ryan's response.

"The people who hired him probably figured it was safer to kill him than run the risk of having an attack of conscience and rat them out," Kate figured.

"Okay. So without evidence, how are we going to find them?" Castle asked.

She stood up, some excitement rising inside her as she worked it out. "By finding out exactly who they hired Zalman to kill. We know he was working on a trick involving C-4 and a remote triggering device."

"Well, whoever he killed went out with a bang," Ryan quipped and Kate turned to look at him, raising her eyebrows in some surprise. He had been spending too much time around Castle when Ryan started making such puns. He had the grace to look rather sheepish at her look and she gave him a small grimace of understanding.

"There can't have been that many deaths in the Tri-State area in the last couple weeks where someone was killed by an explosion," Kate said, returning to business, before turning to Ryan. "Where are we with ATF and the Fire Department?"

"We're supposed to get their reports in the morning."

"Okay. Meantime, let's see what we can dig up ourselves," she directed.

Ryan nodded and pushed himself off from her desk. "On it. See you tomorrow, Beckett, Castle."

Castle raised a hand. "Later, Ryan." He turned to her. "I bet I can figure out who Zalman was hired to kill before you can."

She scoffed and raised her eyebrows at him. "Really, Castle? How do you figure that?"

He put on an exaggeratedly pompous expression. "Beckett, I've spent half my adult life doing research. Finding out who's died in an explosion in the Tri-State area recently is a piece of cake."

"Oh yeah? And what'll I get if I figure it out first?"

He stood up and moved closer to her, wriggling his shoulders a little in one of his habitual movements as he did so. "I don't know. What do you want?" he asked, his voice lowering, becoming husky.

 _You._ It was the only word that leaped to mind.

Her brain had gone momentarily blank, her mouth dry, in the sudden surge of lust. The way he wriggled his shoulders like that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the width of his chest and it was worse because she could picture just what the movement would do to the muscles of his chest.

She mentally shook herself in an attempt to regain coherence. They were in the middle of the bullpen, damn it! "I… how about a day where you have to do everything I tell you?" It was the quickest thing that came to mind. It had distinct possibilities come to think about it…

He thought about it and then said, "Deal. And if I win, you have to show me your trick with the ice cubes."

She smirked. "Good thing you're not going to win."

"You so sure about that?"

"I'm a cop, Castle. I spend my entire life unraveling conspiracies to kill someone."

"I'm a mystery writer. I spend my life thinking about how to kill people," he shot back immediately.

"That's in fiction, Castle. I'm experienced in solving crimes in the real world."

He scoffed as they headed out of the bullpen. "Oh come on, Beckett, hiring a magician to get away with murder? You've gotta admit it sounds like a plot straight out of a mystery novel."

Okay, so he had a point there. "I still think I'm going to win."

He threw her a smirk. "Bring it on, Beckett. You on your laptop and me on mine, back at the loft?"

"You're on," she agreed, giving him a challenging grin.

They stopped off at her apartment for her to pick up her laptop and then went to the loft, to be greeted by Martha and Alexis with their usual pleasure.

They had a quick dinner, just her and Castle, since Martha and Alexis had already eaten since she and Castle were late in returning to the loft, and then Alexis retreated back to her room to finish up her homework while Martha also swanned upstairs.

They had deliberately avoided talking about the case while they ate and then they both settled on the couch at either end, more space between them than usual.

"So you ready to lose, Beckett?" Castle shot her a teasing smirk.

"You're the one who's going to lose."

"We shall see," he intoned with mock solemnity. "And may the best man win."

She snorted. "The best woman," she retorted. "So let's start."

He nodded. "Right. On three. One. Two. Three."

Kate immediately dove into looking up explosions in the Tri-State area, a little surprised at the sheer number of results she received. Even she had had no idea that there were so many explosions in the area in any given week—from gas leaks to industrial accidents. She was beginning to think it might take longer than she had thought to winnow through the list but she wasn't about to give up. Not many of those explosions involved deaths of people, which helped.

She shot a quick glance at Castle to see him frowning intently at his laptop as he scrolled down a list, no doubt of the explosions in the area.

She returned her gaze to her laptop and continued going through the list of explosion-related deaths.

A news article announcing the presumed death of the billionaire businessman Christian Dahl caught her eye and she passed over it, only to freeze, and then go back, opening the article to skim it.

Wait. Could that be…

An explosion hadn't been proven, just eyewitness reports of a white flash and smoke in the sky, but…

Organophosphates. Lanie's information returned to her. Not nerve agents but jet oil.

She went over it again in her head just to be sure—but the more she thought, the more certain she was. Dahl was exactly the sort of man who would have enemies and enemies with the resources to promise Zalman a half a million dollars if he helped them kill Dahl and get away with it.

It was a brilliant scheme, if it could be proven.

"I think I've got it," she blurted out at the same moment as Castle looked up from his laptop and announced, "I think I've found Zalman's victim."

Their eyes met and they grinned almost in spite of themselves.

"So do you want to tell me your guess?" she asked, moving her laptop off her lap and onto the table as she shifted to face him.

"The billionaire—" he began and she knew.

"Christian Dahl," she finished in unison with him.

He gaped at her. "You guessed that too? How did you…"

She smirked. "Organophosphates. Jet oil. Airport," she explained succinctly, already knowing that he would have followed the same train of thought.

"It's like telepathy. You sure you can't read my mind?"

"Telepathy isn't real."

He pouted at her. "You don't think there's anything the least bit supernatural about how we both managed to come to the same conclusion at the same time?"

"It's not supernatural. We just work together well."

"I still think our connection is magical."

She laughed. "I knew you would." And she kind of loved him for it, too. Loved his childish, persistent belief in things like magic and aliens and psychics. "So I guess our bet is a draw," she added, changing the subject.

"Nope, I think I've won."

Kate choked on air and narrowed her eyes at him. "What—why—how do you figure that?" she spluttered.

He assumed an expression of saintly humility. "After all, you are the professional at unraveling conspiracies to kill someone, as you put it, and I'm only an amateur civilian, but I still managed to figure it out just as quickly as you did so I say the victory is mine."

Really? Now was the time he chose to remember that he was an amateur civilian? "That is absolutely—"

"True," he inserted.

"Nonsensical," she finished instead. "We both figured it out at the same time. Therefore, it's a draw."

He shook his head. "Nuh uh. I still think I've won," he said in a rather sing-song tone.

"You did not win."

"Did too."

She opened her lips to retort _did not_ automatically but then bit the words back. Castle might be entirely at ease sounding like a 5-year-old—he seemed to spend a decent amount of time acting like an overgrown child as it was—but she was a grown-up. "Do I need to show you the dictionary definition of winning?" she asked tartly instead. "Finishing at the same time does not mean that you win."

Ridiculous, silly man. And at the moment, she flatly refused to admit that she found him kind of adorable for being so silly. Anyway, adorable or not, she absolutely did not agree that he'd won. He hadn't won. It had been a draw, a tie.

"It's a moral victory, the principle of the thing," he pontificated and then added, "But I can be magnanimous in my victory so I'll still agree, out of the kindness of my heart, to do what you say for one day as long as you still show me your trick with the ice cubes."

She made a show of thinking about it, for rather longer than necessary, before she finally nodded. "It's a deal."

"But to honor my victory, you need to show me your trick first."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "It wasn't your victory and you shouldn't be adding conditions after we already had a deal."

He pouted at her. "It's a minor change. Does it really matter?"

She rolled her eyes a little. Drat the persistent man. She knew him too well to think he wasn't perfectly capable of persisting and even though she wasn't, at the moment, pleased about admitting it, his pout kind of worked on her. It was his eyes, she decided rather irritably. His dratted ocean blue eyes that could cajole her so effectively. "Oh fine," she gave in with an exaggeratedly beleaguered air. "I'll agree but only because I like you," she grumbled with more disgruntlement than she really felt.

He reached out and pulled her towards him until she fell against him, laughing almost in spite of herself.

"I think you more than like me, Beckett," he smirked.

She gave him a teasing look. "Eh, you're not so bad," she said in the tone of someone making a great concession.

"Not so bad?" he sputtered in histrionic outrage, as she'd known he would. "Oh, I'm so going to get back at you for that."

She bit her lip to keep from smiling. "Do your worst, Castle."

His answer was to bend his head and kiss her, hard, his lips and tongue taking possession of hers, until she moaned deep in her throat and pushed herself closer to him, all other thoughts having promptly flown out of her head.

She had no idea how long the kiss went on but she was momentarily jolted out of her haze of lust when she found herself being picked up and bodily lifted. She could have, if she'd really wanted to, broken free, but instead she buried her face in the hollow of his throat, the spot she loved, wrapped her legs around his waist, and held on, laughing, only to have her laughter abruptly cut off as he dropped her onto his bed and then promptly followed her.

First her clothes and then his disappeared as if by magic, his skillful hands making quick work of them, as he distracted her by scattering soft kisses over every additional inch of skin he exposed.

And then she forgot to think, forgot about everything else except the touch of his lips and his hands and his tongue as he made her gasp and then pant and then cry out, a cry she mostly managed to smother in the pillow.

Some time later, she slowly returned to earth and an awareness of her surroundings, to find him sprawled bonelessly beside her, his arm and his leg keeping her anchored to the mattress.

She stirred, shifted, and curled herself closer to him, nestling comfortably against his heat and his strength. "Okay, Castle, I like you a lot," she murmured half-teasingly.

He let out a huff of breath that was half a laugh and tightened his arm around her, dusting a kiss to her bare shoulder. "Ditto."

She smiled and then she slept.

 _~To be continued…~_


	13. Chapter 12: Poof! You're Dead 2

Author's Note: The second chapter based on "Poof, You're Dead," so as usual, there's more familiar dialogue ahead. I will only add that these scenes were some of my favorite Caskett scenes in S3 so I can only hope I did them justice.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 12_

They spent the next day looking into Christian Dahl's life, trying to find anything to confirm what was still mostly unconfirmed speculation that Zalman had been paid to kill Christian Dahl. But then the picture changed focus with all they found out until it no longer appeared as if Christian Dahl had been a victim after all.

"If I were him, I'd want to disappear too," Castle commented after she told him about the investigation and pending indictment of Dahl for his suspected fraud.

"And what better way to disappear—" she began.

"Than hire a magician?" Castle finished for her.

She smiled. She'd known he would be on the same wavelength. "Bingo."

They turned to watch the video footage of Dahl's leaving on his trans-Atlantic flight.

"Christian Dahl's on the plane doing his pre-flight check," Castle narrated. "Zalman leaves the plane. Dahl taxies to the runway and takes off."

"Well, he had to have gotten off at some point. Otherwise it would have been a suicide mission. You don't need a magician for that," Kate pointed out.

Castle stilled, staring at the frozen images on the screen, as a sudden thought occurred to him. "Unless… That isn't Christian Dahl," he speculated.

Kate blinked. Okay, now he was just grasping at straws. "Looks just like him."

"Dummy."

What? Kate blinked and raised her eyebrows at him. He wasn't—he couldn't be—referring to her. He wouldn't. He wasn't that stupid, for one thing. And anyway, she knew Castle had a healthy respect for her intelligence.

He belatedly appeared to realize what his response had sounded like and abruptly looked flustered. "Not you," he corrected hastily. "The… on… in the cockpit," he stammered a little before explaining quickly, "They switched out real Dahl for dummy Dahl. Magnus didn't build a triggering device for an explosion. The arm he built was for doing the pre-fight check. The whole thing's an automaton. That's the magic trick! He made it look to the world like Christian Dahl was still on the plane. The same way Tobias Strange made it look like he was still in the cabinet when the swords went in."

That… made sense. And fit the evidence they'd found out. Kate felt a rush of excitement but tamped it down, trying to remain calm and rational, looking for any holes in his conjecture. "And then he used the catering box to get the dummy on-board and Christian Dahl off. Then who's piloting the plane?"

"Christian Dahl. Only not from the cockpit. He had it rigged to fly via remote control," Castle explained excitedly, playing the video again and gesturing to the screen. "See? Zalman puts the box in the van. There's probably a console inside there linked to the plane's avionics. Dahl takes off remotely, flies out over the Atlantic…"

"And then he detonates the explosion and everyone thinks he's dead because everyone's seen him onboard," Kate finished, turning to Castle, her excitement rising to meet his as the pieces came together in her mind. Entirely unconsciously, she drifted closer to him, drawn inexorably towards him as if tugged by an invisible string connecting the two of them.

"Only Dahl is very much alive and there's only one person in the world that knows it," Castle went on.

"Zalman. And as long as he's alive, he's a threat to Dahl," Kate continued.

"So Dahl has to tie up the one loose end—"

"But he can't risk anyone knowing that he's still alive—"

"So Dahl has to kill Zalman himself," Castle capped off the back-and-forth sentence, his lips curving into a smile that reflected her own, his eyes lighting up with the same excitement and sense of accomplishment she felt. Their eyes met and held in a sudden, intense moment of utter communion, mesmeric attraction suddenly arcing between them—an attraction that, for once, was less about physical desire and more an attraction of equal minds.

It really was… magic, she found herself thinking fuzzily. This amazing, inexplicable way that she and Castle worked together. They were so different in so many ways, different in how they approached cases, but somehow, they simply… fit together.

She couldn't explain the strange alchemy that occurred when she and Castle were together but she was beginning to think she didn't need to try to explain it. After all, maybe Castle was right when he said that their connection was, in its own way, magical. It was a connection, a rapport, she'd never felt before with anyone and one she didn't think she would ever find again.

She suddenly remembered him saying to her last fall that he would make her believe in the possibility of magic. He had succeeded, at least when it came to them.

"God, I wish I could kiss you right now," he blurted out.

She let out a shaky breath, flushing hotly. And she honestly had no idea how she kept from taking the last final step forward, closing the small distance between them, until she could kiss him. Because she wanted to—oh, how she wanted to kiss him. More than kiss him. Wanted their bodies to be as close, as intertwined, as their minds seemed to be. Wanted to feel the way the physical chemistry between them would be magnified by the mental connection.

She yanked her mind away from that train of thought. They were in the precinct, she reminded herself sternly. And they had a murderer to catch.

But even so, she couldn't keep herself from responding, her voice husky, "Later."

His eyes flared. "I'll hold you to that."

She had to take a step back before she did something stupid like kissing him right there in full view of the rest of the precinct and desperately tried to return her attention to the case. "Well, it's four days since the accident," she noted, trying to sound her usual businesslike self. "Christian Dahl is probably in some non-extradition country with a chunk of his fortune by now."

It was true, as depressing as the thought was. That Christian Dahl might succeed in getting away with murder because he had money and resources most people didn't have and had used Zalman's skills to successfully get people to think he was dead.

Until Castle, with his usual insight into people and the way people thought, pointed out that Dahl, with his love of publicity and fame, would never miss the chance to appear at his own funeral. And as he'd predicted, so it proved. Dahl was, fittingly, brought down by his own hubris—and a little magical assistance from Tobias Strange and Edmund Drake.

"Another nice solve," Castle said as they watched Tobias and Edmund leave the precinct.

"That was a good idea about Dahl's funeral," she told him giving him a quick smile.

He dipped his head a little, looking pleased, and she suppressed a smile, feeling a rush of warmth in her chest. He looked so… young… at this moment and she kind of loved that, for all Castle's usual braggadocio, sometimes when she acknowledged an insight he'd had into a case, he would react like this, seeming almost bashful which was not a word she would ever associate with Castle normally. It didn't happen often—usually Castle's cockiness was on full display—but occasionally, when either she or Alexis and sometimes Martha complimented him, he reacted as if he were still the little, insecure boy he must have once been. And she couldn't help her little flutter of reaction because he only ever reacted like that over kind words from the people whose good opinion he cared the most about and that included her. She also knew that this glimpse of his insecurity was something he showed to almost no one else in his life; it was a sign of his trust.

Ryan came up, interrupting the moment, as he had the paperwork to finish processing Dahl's arrest for her to sign. Castle automatically gave her his back to use as a writing surface.

"So where's Esposito?"

"Take a wild guess," Ryan answered with a grin.

"Lanie," both she and Castle said knowingly.

"Can you believe they still think that none of us know?" Ryan asked.

"Let's let them keep thinking that a while longer," Castle said indulgently and then added, pensively, "The bubble will burst soon enough."

It was a more realistic, not to say cynical, view than Kate would have expected to hear from Castle, the perennial optimist, and she felt a little pang of doubt, insecurity, twist her heart. She didn't—she really _didn't_ —believe for a moment he was thinking about her, about them, at all. From the shadows clouding the clear blue of his eyes, she would bet he was thinking of Meredith and probably of Gina but she still didn't like it. She knew that he, with his past history, had more reason to be jaded about relationships than many people but she didn't like to hear him sounding so jaded about a relationship, any relationship. The phrase from the Page Six article flitted through her mind again—"the famously love-them-and-leave them author"—and a tiny voice in her mind couldn't help but wonder if some part of him half-expected the "bubble" of romance, of love, to burst for them too.

She was being silly, she scolded herself. She knew him and she knew he loved her, was happy with her (as much as it surprised her sometimes). It was in his eyes, in his smile. It was in every cup of coffee he gave her. And Castle was the believer, the one who had faith in their relationship. He had told her months ago right after they got together that he believed in them. _I think we'll keep on being amazing together,_ he had said then and she believed him.

And of the two of them, she was the more cynical one. She was the one who didn't really believe in happy endings and relationships lasting forever and magic—but she realized, again, just how much she had changed because of Castle, because of being with Castle. Being with him, loving him, made her _want_ to believe in magic and always—and after all, she knew that love was real and could last. She had seen it herself in her parents every day of her life until her mom had died and even after that. And with Castle, she could, for the first time, picture that sort of loving, lasting relationship for herself.

"Not if you're in it with the right person," she found herself saying. The right person. She didn't know if Lanie and Esposito were the right people for each other, as happy as they seemed to be now, but she knew she was with the right person.

She suddenly experienced one of her fleeting moments of incredulity, amazement washing over her. If anyone had told her when she and Castle had first met that he was the right person, she would have scoffed, would never have believed it in a million years. Richard Castle—immature, cocky playboy that she had thought he was, the man in the tabloids with two failed marriages and a string of casual flings behind him—she would never ever have expected it or predicted it. She still found it hard to believe sometimes.

She felt Castle's suddenly arrested look but didn't quite manage to meet his eyes as she gave the file back to Ryan with a quick smile.

Castle's phone buzzed and they both glanced at the screen as he held it up to see that it was Alexis.

Castle turned away, answering the call with barely a glance at her but then, she knew—and he knew she knew—that he always took Alexis's calls.

She watched his retreating back, feeling a rush of warmth inside her chest. He was such a good father—and, yes, he was the right person. _Her_ right person.

She made her way back to her desk and then glanced around to make sure Castle was still occupied on the phone before she slipped something she'd placed into a drawer earlier under her arm and retreated into the women's restroom. Entirely on impulse, she had planned a little surprise for him, and even now, she still wasn't entirely sure where the impetus for it had come from.

She arranged the surprise and then shrugged into her jacket before emerging from the restroom to find Castle waiting at her desk.

"Hey. Everything all right with Alexis?" she asked, rather unnecessarily. His eyes were clear, his stance easy, none of which would be the case if anything had been the matter.

"She just wanted to remind me that she has a date with Ashley tonight."

"That's nice," she murmured. "I was thinking of going to catch the comfort food truck. That okay with you?"

His eyes lit up with that childlike enthusiasm that was so much a part of him. "Macaroni and cheese? Warm biscuits? Hot chocolate? Do I ever say no to that?"

She nudged him with her elbow as he fell into step beside her. "Nice to know that you get more excited about the food than you do about spending time with me," she teased.

"Well, you know what they say, Beckett, the surest way to a man's heart is through his stomach."

She smirked at him. "I'll keep that in mind."

"You don't need to. After all, you won my heart a long time ago."

"Smooth, Castle," she jibed but the words were belied by the smile that she couldn't help. She didn't know how he did it—it was part of his charm—that Castle could sometimes say such cheesy things and somehow manage to make even trite words feel meaningful. Maybe it was the utter sincerity of his eyes and tone but whatever the reason, at times, he could make her heart flutter almost in spite of herself with words that would have made her scoff and roll her eyes had anyone else said them.

"Hey, I wanted to say thanks," he added after a moment, his tone changing, "for not letting the boys and Lanie give me a hard time about that article about me and Gina. I know you hate being in the papers for things like that."

They stepped into the elevator while she finished pretending to adjust her gloves and then whipped out her surprise for Castle, a bouquet of flowers pulled from up her sleeve. "Not a problem." And it hadn't been. Lanie, especially, had been inclined to give Castle a hard time over the article, her best-friend-protectiveness coming to the fore, but Kate had found herself surprisingly willing to step in and assure Lanie, to say nothing of the boys, that she wasn't perturbed over the article in the least.

Castle blinked at her and gaped a little, a delighted smile starting in his eyes and spreading outwards to his lips, as he accepted the flowers and then lifted them to his nose as he pretended to inhale the nonexistent scent. "You got me flowers? You do have some tricks up your sleeves, don't you?"

She smirked, even as she rolled her eyes a little at the lame pun and his antics in pretending to smell the flowers. Silly, adorable man. "You didn't think you knew everything about me, did you, Castle?"

He sobered in one of his lightning-quick changes of mood. "I doubt I'll ever know everything there is to know about you."

Her heart fluttered a little at the utter seriousness and sincerity in his eyes and his voice, the words reassuring the little corner of insecurity that lurked in the back corner of her mind that he might, someday, become bored with her, that she wouldn't be enough for him. She wasn't the easiest person to get to know, she knew that, but even so, after knowing her for less than two years, she already felt as if Castle knew her better than anyone else in her life except for her dad. And what would happen if the mystery ever faded?

But she made answer lightly. "Can't have you getting bored, can I?"

"I told you once that you're a mystery I'm never going to solve and I meant it. I don't think you could bore me if you tried."

"Is that supposed to be a challenge?" she managed to quip, even as her heart warmed inside her chest. A mystery he was never going to solve—how did he always have the right words to reassure her? "You know how competitive I can be."

He laughed. "Take it as you will, Beckett, but I, for one, am sure that boring me is one challenge even you would fail at."

She grinned and nudged his elbow teasingly with hers as they walked towards her car.

Castle took exaggerated care in placing the flowers on his lap after he was seated, which she noted with an inward smile.

"Thank you for the flowers, Kate. No one's ever given me flowers before."

She smiled delightedly, warmth and pleasure welling up inside her. It was a little amazing how much it meant to her, to know that she was the first, but somehow, it really did. And paradoxically, that was the moment when she knew she was being silly to care about Castle's past marriages. She might not be his first love—but she thought—she believed—she would be his _last_ love and that was what really mattered. After all, the most important word in "one and done" was not the "one" but the "done." She was done, now that she had found her right person, and as long as he was done too, nothing else mattered. "You're welcome," was all she said, simply.

His eyes crinkled slightly at the corners as he gave her a faint smile, one of his real smiles, the ones that she always thought revealed the depths of Castle's heart.

There was a brief silence and then he said, "I hope Edmund Drake and Tobias Strange manage to save Drake's Magic Shop."

"Yeah, me too."

"Drake's is iconic in the magic world and there just aren't that many real, old-fashioned magic shops anymore. I might look into making an anonymous donation or something," he added rather thoughtfully.

She threw him a teasing look. "Owning a bar isn't enough? You want to own a magic shop too?" Not that she seriously thought he would look into buying Drake's. But an anonymous donation to enable Edmund Drake to keep Drake's open was very like him. She knew he was a generous man but she'd gradually learned over the past months that the vast majority of Castle's charitable donations were made anonymously. (She had discovered that even the amount she knew he'd given to the NYPD Widows and Orphans Fund was only a fraction of the total amount he had donated over the last couple years, a total amount she still didn't know and suspected she probably never would since Castle had first tried to deflect and then talked in generalities when she'd tried to pin him down as to the actual number.) As far as she knew, the only organization he publicly supported on a regular basis was the New York Public Library but that was because as a well-known, best-selling author, his name helped about as much as his money did.

He chuckled. "The Old Haunt is plenty. I wasn't planning on buying Drake's."

She'd already known that, of course, but as usual, teasing him came easier than admitting aloud how much she loved his quiet generosity. (And she realized, again, how much she'd misunderstood about Castle when they first met, not helped by his own mannerisms, as she would never in a million years have imagined that Castle would do anything quietly, would have thought that Castle would be one of those who flaunted his charitable donations in order to win public approval. He could be vain about his looks and tended to boast about his writing, the people he knew, and still, sometimes, his playboy past when his mouth ran away before his brain caught up, but when it came to the things that really mattered, the things that made him the good man he was—his generosity, his devotion to his family—he didn't boast.)

They caught up to the comfort food truck at one of its regular stations across from Central Park and Kate was pleasantly surprised to find a convenient parking space just a couple blocks away.

And even though the truck did have a few other items on the menu, she and Castle agreed without words to order two servings of mac and cheese, a small basket of biscuits, and two hot chocolates, hurrying back to the warmth of her car with their bounty.

Once they returned to her car, though, Kate watched with amusement as Castle made a show of moving the flowers to the back seat where they wouldn't be in the way, treating them as carefully as if the flowers really would bruise at any ungentle touch.

"You realize the flowers are fake, Castle," she teased.

"Don't mock, Beckett. I'm just taking care of them since I fully intend to keep them forever."

She laughed softly. "I could just give you more flowers."

"But these are the first flowers anyone has ever given me. That makes them doubly precious."

"Well, hurry it up so we can eat since I'm hungry."

He finished fussing over the flowers—silly, sentimental man—and then finally, they dove in to the food that was as good as it usually was.

They ate in silence for a moment and then he asked, "Your grandfather was really an amateur magician? That is so cool!"

She smiled at his enthusiasm. "My grandfather would have liked you. He always wanted to make me laugh when I looked too serious." A sudden memory of the time she'd been around six years old and sulking over something returned to her—she couldn't remember why she'd been pouting, maybe it had been because her parents had refused to buy her something she wanted—her parents had taken her over to her grandparents' house, the young Katie displeased with the world and determined not to enjoy herself in the slightest. Her grandfather had started out with his usual trick of greeting her by producing a nickel from behind her ear but she had stubbornly refused to crack a smile. Her grandfather had tsked and made a teasing remark about turning her frown upside down—again to no response from her—and with that, her grandfather had set out on a campaign to make her smile, pulling flowers from his sleeve and presenting them to her, making a spoon disappear under a napkin, pretending to eat a napkin and then pulling a long string of colorful handkerchiefs from his mouth. The young Katie—always stubborn—had held out for all of this but eventually, when her grandfather had pretended to pull a quarter from the young Katie's nose, she had given in and allowed herself a small smile.

Yes, her grandfather would have liked Castle. He would have appreciated the way Castle could make her laugh, would have liked Castle's more light-hearted approach to life.

"Really?" Castle's slight smile was faintly incredulous.

"Yes, really." Her smile softened, became a little wistful. "He used to say I was too clever for my own good when I figured out how one of his tricks worked and then insisted on learning how all his tricks worked."

"Did he explain to you how the tricks worked?"

"Yeah, he did," she answered softly. And her grandfather had shown boundless patience and showered her with encouragement as he taught her to do some of the basic tricks, seemingly indifferent to all the time it took as her young fingers fumbled with the motions countless times.

Castle clicked his tongue and commented with a smirk, "Rookie mistake. A good magician never reveals his secrets."

She laughed quietly. "My grandfather told me that too when I first asked him to show me how his tricks worked but then he said that his favorite magic trick of all was making me smile so he would show me because I was special."

"That's nice. A good grandfather."

"Yes, he was," she agreed, her smile becoming tinged with melancholy. She suddenly recalled with a flash of clarity the way her grandfather had told her that a lot of the fun of magic tricks was in the ingenuity required and that moment of anticipation to see if the illusion worked the way it was supposed to but also that he had encouraged her to suspend her disbelief, in spite of knowing how many of the tricks were performed. He had told her that it was good to preserve some sense of wonder.

She had largely forgotten her grandfather's words until now, she realized. Her grandfather had passed away when she'd been in high school—mercifully so, Kate had later come to think after her mother's death, because it had meant her grandfather had not been alive to know about his daughter's murder—and with the way her life had been so drastically changed afterwards, Kate had not really thought about her grandfather in years. Returning to Drake's Magic Shop and reminiscing with Castle had brought the memories back.

"There were a couple of his tricks that he refused to explain to me. He challenged me to try to guess how it was done but if I couldn't, it wouldn't be a bad thing because it was important for me to still feel a sense of wonder, for me to still be able to believe for just a few moments of waiting to see a trick that magic might be real." She paused and gave Castle a soft smile. "He wanted me to believe in the possibility of magic."

Castle remembered the phrase, as she'd known he would. "And do you believe in the possibility of magic now, Kate?"

She ducked her head a little and felt herself flush, thinking about that moment when his theory about the way Dahl had arranged his own disappearance had come together in her mind and become their theory, all the moments when their thoughts were somehow in sync. "I might," she admitted, almost having to force the words out over her fluttering heart. "At least when it comes to some things."

"Like what? I know you don't believe in aliens or ghosts or psychics so what kind of magical or otherworldly things do you believe in?"

She thought about it for a moment. "I believe in the everyday magic of life. I mean, things that I can see and touch like the green shoots that pop through the ground in February. Or the Flatiron building. Or the way that I feel when I hear Coltrane." And she believed in the magic that was _them_ , their relationship.

"I can appreciate the everyday," Castle responded pensively. She couldn't quite help her small smile. Yes, she knew he appreciated the everyday too. It was something that never quite ceased to surprise her, his ability to find happiness and humor in the everyday. For all his beliefs in the supernatural, he could be equally enthusiastic about reality, tangible goods. "But why not live in the possible? The world just doesn't have as many mysteries anymore," he noted. "There's no new continents to explore. There's no more deepest, darkest Africa. Everything's all mapped out by satellites and sonar. Yet still, people reach for the unknown. It's what makes us grow."

"We still have space to explore, that final frontier."

He smiled, his eyes brightening. "To boldly go where no man has gone before?" he quipped.

"Right," she agreed, flashing him a quick, faint smile. "I understand what you're saying. People are meant to be explorers, to keep on learning about new things, coming up with new innovations, discovering new truths about ourselves and the world we live in. It's the work of scientists and inventors and artists."

"Exactly. The history of mankind is on a timeline of exploration. I think it's in humanity's nature to keep seeking to explain the unexplainable, to search for the unknown, that 'desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.'"

"'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.' Tennyson,"* she capped his quotation after a moment's thought, even as she felt a visceral tug of an attraction that wasn't really physical as she usually did when Castle spoke seriously, thoughtfully about something, caught and held by the reminder that he really was her favorite author, that something about the way his mind worked had always attracted her. Still attracted her. Attracted her more now that she knew just how well their minds could work together.

A spark kindled in his eyes as usually happened whenever she met and matched his knowledge of literature and she felt her heart flutter in her chest, reflecting that she loved his appreciation for her brains, loved the way they could match wits.

"You know, there is one more thing I believe in that I didn't mention," she began, sternly controlling her tone.

"What's that?"

"It's an inexplicable, mysterious phenomenon that I've thought about a lot lately and I think I've finally accepted that it's magical in its own way."

A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "What magical phenomenon is this?"

"Us."

His smile started in his eyes and then spread to his lips, curving upwards. He slid his hand behind her neck, his fingers tangling with her hair, as he gently tugged her towards him. "I believe in us too," he said huskily just before he kissed her. His lips were soft and warm and she could taste the hot chocolate they had both been drinking, mingled in with the familiar taste that was just him, and she thought fuzzily that this was definitely her favorite combination. Chocolate and Castle, mmm. Who needed ambrosia?

Her mind went blissfully blank as he kissed her languidly but with a devastating thoroughness, his tongue curling over hers.

The sound of a car horn sounding somewhere nearby made them both startle and jerk apart and recalled Kate to a sense of their surroundings, that they were kissing while sitting in her car on a busy street in Manhattan.

Castle's eyes looked somewhat hazy and unfocused, as she fully expected hers did as well, and he had to blink a little to clear them before he gave her a rather rueful twist of his lips. "I think I got a little carried away."

"Not just you, Castle," she managed to say and then had to avert her eyes from the way his eyes flared. Because damn it, the way he was always so responsive to her just made her want to pull him closer to her and… make him _respond_ some more.

And she was suddenly impatient for the rest of the night to arrive, for the plan she'd made to be put into action. She had a promise to keep, after all, and she wanted to keep her part of the bargain before he could start pouting (and probably succeeding in winning even more concessions out of her).

She quickly packed up the rest of her food, reaching around to set it on the back seat. "Come on, Castle, I'll drop you off at the loft."

He tried—she could see that he tried—to hide his disappointment but his shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly, the light in his eyes fading, although he did manage to keep his expression otherwise neutral. "Oh. Right. You don't want to spend the night at the loft?" he asked.

"Actually, I have some other plans tonight."

"Oh. Sure. Okay."

She bit her lip to keep from smiling. He was so… cute… when he pouted, looked rather like a little boy being denied a treat. She felt warmth blossoming in her chest at how he wasn't making any verbal protest or even questioning her about her plans. He trusted her and he made such an effort to give her the space that she had once told him she would need. And somehow, oddly enough, his very willingness to give her space made her somehow want space less.

"I seem to remember promising to show someone my trick involving ice," she drawled, deliberately lowering her voice to sound husky.

His entire body seemed to jerk as he turned his head to stare at her, his eyes beginning to darken with lustful anticipation. "You did and… um, you're going to show me the trick tonight?" he almost choked out.

She gave him her best siren's smile and it was her turn to slide her hand around the back of his neck, tugging him closer to her as she leaned into him, purposefully letting her lips graze his cheek and then his earlobe before she whispered into his ear, "I was thinking, you should go back to the loft and wait to make sure Alexis gets home safely after her date and then come over to my place."

"I'm calling Alexis and telling her to come home now," he blurted out immediately, his voice already a little strained.

She released him and drew back, nudging him in the shoulder as she did so. "You will do no such thing," she told him, mildly since she didn't believe he had any intention of actually asking Alexis to cut her date short.

"You're really going to make me wait?" he asked, giving her his best puppy-dog look.

Such a spoiled child sometimes—but he was kind of adorable when he pouted, although she didn't like to admit it. She hardened her heart to the appeal of his expression, his so-blue eyes, to her automatic wish to give in to see the way his eyes and his expression lit up when she did. "Alexis will be home around 10 and you know it so it won't be that long of a wait."

"Any wait is too long," he groused.

"You'll survive," she smirked at him. "Besides," she added, letting her voice drop, become husky, "I have to prepare."

He shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the headrest with something like a muffled groan. "You're evil, you know that?"

"You still love me," she returned, feeling a happy, even a little giddy, smile curve her lips. _He_ loved _her_. This dear, amazing, silly, irritating, generous man loved her. She found herself thinking of the way he'd told her last summer that she— _she_ , who was so damaged, so broken, so needy—was the best thing that had ever happened to him. The feeling was entirely mutual. He—his love for her, their relationship—was undoubtedly the best thing that had ever happened to her.

He opened his eyes and turned to look at her, his expression softening, his eyes filling with the tender light she only ever saw when he was looking at Alexis or—wonderfully enough—at her. "Oddly enough, I do."

 _~To be continued…~_

* The lines Castle and Beckett quote are from the poem "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

A/N 2: Fair warning that I think I'll need to skip updating this fic next week, both because the holidays are keeping me busy and also because the next chapter(s) will be dealing with "Knockdown," and I want to do justice to what is one of my all-time favorite episodes ever. As always, thank you all for reading. I hope everyone has very happy holidays.


	14. Chapter 13: Knockdown 1

Author's Note: The first of three chapters based on 3x13 "Knockdown"—for which I can only say that I hope I've added in enough new stuff that it doesn't seem boring since I'm sure everyone knows the episode almost by heart, but I will leave that to you to determine. Some familiar lines of dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 13_

Castle couldn't seem to stop shaking.

His hands trembled as he fumbled awkwardly with the faucet in the coffee shop bathroom, trying not to smear the handle with blood—oh god, the blood—and after a moment, he finally managed it and stuck his hands under the flow of cold, cleansing water.

His hands were still trembling, almost imperceptibly, but they were undeniably trembling as he scrubbed at his hands, the skin under his nails. It always struck him as being a little creepy the way blood dried in clumps, showing the truth of the saying that blood was thicker than water, that even after the liquid part of it had dried, flakes and miniscule chunks remained.

It wasn't just his hands. He felt weirdly as if all his internal organs were trembling too. His heart rate was up, his heart bounding around in his chest, his breath coming unevenly, and he just felt jittery. He knew he wasn't the most restful, calm person at the best of times but this was worse than any restlessness he'd ever felt.

The blood—Raglan's blood—was staining the water in the sink pink and he felt his stomach turn as he looked at it.

Raglan's blood—the same blood that had spurted onto Beckett's white turtleneck.

Oh god.

His stomach lurched violently and he stumbled over to the toilet, falling to his knees and dry-heaving over it, those fleeting, interminable seconds of hearing the shot and diving out of the booth and then—oh god—seeing the blood on her shirt and thinking—he jerked his mind away from the thought, not even able to contemplate the words in his mind. It had been the worst moment of his life.

Seeing Beckett's old apartment blow up knowing she was still inside it had been bad enough, had been an image that had haunted his nightmares and some of his waking moments—day-mares?—for weeks afterwards. This moment, this afternoon, was going to top that. Because he hadn't really been in love with her then, when her apartment had exploded—well, okay, that wasn't true. He'd already been in love with Beckett then; at this point, he barely remembered a time when he hadn't been in love with her. But in a way, it was true too because he might have loved her but he hadn't known it, not really, and he hadn't known what it would be like to be with Beckett, to love her openly, to be able to look into her eyes and see all that he felt reflected back at him. He did now and with every day, he felt like he was falling deeper and deeper in love with her.

His overactive imagination—the bane of his life at this moment—tortured him with mental images of Beckett lying gasping on the floor of the coffee shop like Raglan had, of Beckett's eyes—her beautiful green-gold eyes—glazing over, her blood staining her shirt…

He shuddered and dry-heaved again, trying desperately to scrub the images from his mind.

Kate was _fine_. She was just fine, right outside in the coffee shop, surrounded by uniforms to say nothing of Captain Montgomery and Esposito and Ryan. She hadn't been hit or injured at all.

After another few moments, he managed to push himself to his feet again, still shaky and a little jittery but not quite feeling as if he would shatter internally into a million little pieces either.

He made his way carefully back to the sink, walking with too much precision as if he had been drinking, to scrub his hands, again.

His hands were trembling less, he noted belatedly, as he rested his hands on the edge of the sink and lifted his eyes to the mirror only to wince a little.

God, he looked… old. He knew—as much as he tried to deny it—that he wasn't precisely young anymore; he was after all going to be 40 in a matter of months although he refused to admit that that made him "old." But right now, looking at his reflection, he looked as if he'd aged 10 years in the space of the last hour or so, his face drawn.

He grimaced and turned away. What he looked like right now mattered less than nothing. He needed to get back out there, be with Beckett, to provide moral support if nothing else. Not for the first time, he was amazed at Beckett's strength, her calm in the face of a storm. Her steely determination when he knew how much this must be tearing at her.

He remembered the way she had walked straight into his arms—rather shocking him—when she had come to see him at the loft after Raglan had called. It was unlike her, his strong, independent Detective Beckett, to say the least, even now, after all these months when Kate confided in him, had let him in more than he'd almost dared to hope.

And the way she'd told Raglan, so simply, that he was someone she trusted. Beckett didn't say things like that often, not even to him and certainly not to anyone else.

He felt rather like Lady Macbeth— _Out, damn'd spot!_ —as he walked out of the restroom drying his hands.

"You okay?" Beckett asked quietly as he joined her.

"Yeah. I think I got it all off my hands," he said, choosing to interpret the question as being about the blood rather than anything else. It was just easier.

But he knew that the answer hadn't fooled Beckett for a moment—well, of course it hadn't. She knew him too well for that. "It's different when it happens right in front of you," she told him softly, "close enough to watch the lights go out."

Yes, there was that too. But that wasn't the issue—and he knew she knew it, even if she wasn't referring to it out loud. But he couldn't quite help but blurt out, "When I saw the blood on your shirt, I thought—" he broke off, almost choking on the rest of the words. He couldn't say it.

Her eyes softened, as did the set of her lips, and she made a small, almost imperceptible movement as if to step closer to him before she stopped herself, remembering their surroundings. "I know, Rick," she said, barely above a breath.

As usual, her infrequent use of his first name warmed his heart.

He met her eyes, suddenly remembering the way she had greeted him in that motel room after he'd been taken prisoner by 3XK, the emotion in her voice and spilling out of her eyes. And knew she understood how he felt. And somehow just her very understanding, her empathy, soothed him, seeped into the jagged edges of the terror he'd felt that had scored gashes across his consciousness.

He wanted to hold her, wanted to tug her into his arms and crush her against him so he couldn't tell where his heart beat ended and hers began. Wanted to feel the reassuring warmth of her body, the vitality of her, against him.

But he couldn't. He knew he couldn't.

She might understand how he felt but they were surrounded by cops, to say nothing of the press outside. She was, he saw, still Detective Beckett first. And he didn't even mind because her Detective Beckett side was what he'd fallen in love with first, what had fascinated him and drawn him in from the beginning and still did, always would.

She blinked and he saw a faint bit of color return to her otherwise pale cheeks. "I'm going to go to the 12th," she said with an attempt at sounding brisk. "Come with me?" she asked, a faint thread of uncertainty in her tone, her voice lowering until he could barely hear it.

He managed to give her his best incredulous look. "Of course I'm coming with you," he stated flatly as if it were a foregone conclusion. Which, of course, it was. At that moment, the entire U.S. military couldn't have kept him from staying with Beckett.

The corners of her lips twitched faintly in what might have been the ghost of a smile, a little spark flickering through her shadowed eyes. "Okay." That was all, but what he knew she meant was, _thank you_. And at that moment, that was enough.

He fell into step beside her as they walked out of the coffee shop, skirting around the scrum of reporters and cameras where Captain Montgomery was speaking to the press, and headed to her cruiser. Their hands brushed once, twice, as they walked and then she slipped her hand into his, giving it a brief squeeze. He glanced down at their joined hands and then back up at her, although she wasn't looking at him, kept her gaze trained steadily forward.

But she was holding his hand. She had reached out to him to grip his hand.

Their hands stayed joined for just the short few seconds until they reached her car when they perforce had to separate. But the brief connection was enough—no, it was more than enough. It was _everything_.

* * *

Kate had no very clear memory of how she got back to her apartment after Montgomery so flatly kicked her off of Raglan's murder. (Days later, it occurred to her to be grateful that she'd arrived safely because she'd been so upset she couldn't imagine she'd really been in much of a condition to pay full attention to the road, never a safe bet when driving in Manhattan of all places. But that was later.)

She stormed into her apartment and for once took some perverse pleasure in nearly slamming the door closed behind her, hard enough that the glass doors leading into the main area of her apartment rattled a little.

Montgomery had kicked her off of the Raglan case. She had opened her mouth to argue, had been so close to spitting out angry words that would undoubtedly have had her suspended for insubordination on top of just being kicked off a case, before the tiny voice of her usual rational self had spoken up and stopped her from blowing up her career in a moment of unreasoning temper. Captain Montgomery put up with a lot from her and from Esposito and Ryan; he had brought them all into the 12th, had trained them all, and he wasn't a believer in micro-management, allowed them all a considerable amount of leeway in the way they worked their cases. He tended to treat them informally but even so, they were aware that there were lines that shouldn't be crossed in spite of their normal camaraderie. She had been on the verge of not just crossing said lines but racing past them before she'd abruptly pulled herself up and stormed out of his office before her tenuous hold on her temper slipped from her grasp.

He had kicked her off the Raglan case! This new, fresh shot at her mother's murder when he, of all people, _knew_ what her mother's case meant to her, _knew_ that she knew her mother's case better than anyone. And she, of all people, had more motive to be relentless and thorough in her search for Raglan's killer. How _could_ he!

She paced back and forth muttering unflattering things about Montgomery under her breath, interspersed with general curses in English and Russian, too upset and restless to even think about sitting down. Damn officious bureaucrat, getting in the way of justice for her mother.

But as she paced, snippets of his words echoed in her mind. _He's playing you and you let him get under your skin, acting like a damn rookie!_

Playing her. Acting like a damn rookie. A rookie! She made a sound that could best be described as a snarl and glared at one of the paintings on the wall with an intensity that should by rights have scorched a hole into it.

Acting like a rookie. _You let him get under your skin…_

The interview—Vulcan Simmons's cruel, taunting words—returned to her and she felt a fresh wave of blinding fury—but with the target of her wrath absent, she felt her years of training kick in, her brain forcing herself to take a step back, compartmentalize, and go over the words again.

Oh. Oh _damn_.

She wanted to stay angry at Montgomery—anger was easier—but she'd been trained too well, was too good and too experienced a detective, not to be forced to acknowledge that Montgomery had been right.

She suddenly remembered how angry she'd been at Esposito for storming into the interrogation of Victor Racine last spring. It was one of the first lessons drilled into them when they started in Homicide, to never let their emotions get in the way of their training. There were going to be _those_ cases, the ones that for whatever reason really hit home with a cop, became personal; every right-thinking cop came across one of those cases after they'd been on the job long enough. Some homicide captains, she knew, encouraged their trainees to remain detached always, refused to acknowledge the existence of _those_ cases or if they did, insist that the emotion always be put aside. But Montgomery had told them that it could be a strength, that they could use the extra passion, the drive, that came from those cases wisely, but that they should never let the need for a solution blind them to the evidence or to their own training.

She had acknowledged that Agent Shaw had been right to kick her off the Scott Dunn case last spring because her apartment exploding had made her too close to it for real objectivity.

And blowing up her apartment had been a much less personal thing, affected her less viscerally, than anything to do with her mother's murder.

Vulcan Simmons was too smart of a criminal, knew how to manipulate people—and she had played right into his hands by blowing up. She saw that now.

She dropped heavily down onto her couch, fighting angry tears, except now the anger was directed at herself.

 _She_ had done this. She was the one who had lost control and made it necessary for Montgomery to kick her off Raglan's case.

She was the one who had failed. Failed to keep her emotions under control—acted like a rookie, for which Montgomery had rightly reamed her out. Failed and seen this latest best chance at solving her mother's murder be blocked.

She should have known better. She knew how important it was to keep her cool and she should have been more aware of being manipulated because she, of all people, knew just how viscerally everything to do with her mother's case affected her.

She should have known better. And if she'd been a better cop, she would have kept her cool, would have done everything she could to stay on Raglan's murder.

If she'd been a better cop, she wouldn't still be failing her mother, continuing to fail her mother. If she'd been a better cop…

But she hadn't been. She wasn't.

She blinked back tears and then started as a knock sounded on her door. She pushed herself to her feet and made her way to her door. It was Castle, she knew, and was only, belatedly, a little surprised that it had even taken him this long to follow her to her place after she had stormed out of the precinct, for once not heeding his calling her name.

She opened the door to see that it was Castle, holding a bouquet of brightly-colored flowers. That explained the time it had taken him to get to her place; he must have stopped at a florist on the way.

She managed a small twitch of her lips, the closest she could come at that moment to a smile. "Hey, Castle."

He looked more uncertain of himself than she'd seen him look in a while as he handed her the flowers. "I thought you might like these," he said rather lamely and she read in his tone and in the uncertainty in his eyes that he didn't quite want to say that he'd thought she could use the cheering up.

She accepted the flowers but then grasped his hand and pulled him forward until he wrapped his arms around her, pushing the door closed with his foot. She buried her face in the curve of his neck, shutting her eyes and breathing in the familiar scent of him. The flowers were cheery and nice but being held by Castle was better, did more to comfort her than any flowers ever could. One of his hands stroked her back, moving steadily up and down, and she felt some of the tension that had kept her in a vise-like grip since the moment she'd received Raglan's phone call the day before start to dissolve as if magically drawn out of her at the touch of his hand. (She really had been spending too much time with Castle when she started thinking in terms of magic, a tiny corner of her mind commented.)

It was a long minute before she turned her head and just rested against his shoulder. "I let her down, Rick," she murmured.

His hand paused for the briefest second in its soothing motions before it continued. "Why do you say that?" he asked mildly.

"I lost my head, let Vulcan Simmons play me, and now he's back out on the streets and I'm off the case. I should have known better."

"So maybe it wasn't the smartest thing you ever did," he conceded.

She sniffed a little, letting out a little huff of something approaching amusement at his understatement. "It was a rookie mistake; Montgomery was right. And I'm off the case that was the best new lead into my mother's murder."

He put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her away from him just far enough so he could meet her eyes. "So, what, you've run into a wall and now you're just going to give up?" he asked, a thread of challenge in his voice. "That doesn't sound like the Detective Beckett I know."

She caught the reference to what he'd once said to her. _Most people come up against a wall, they give up. Not you. You don't let go. You don't back down. That's what makes you extraordinary._

She lifted her chin, her jaw setting, as she stiffened her spine. "No, I'm not giving up."

The faintest smile just barely touched his lips, a spark brightening his eyes. "Good. Because you know, I was thinking, all the best cops—Dirty Harry, Cobra, the guy from _Police Academy_ who makes the helicopter noises—they all have one thing in common."

She felt a faint but real smile curve her lips. He was trying to cheer her up, make her smile. "A plucky sidekick?" she returned lightly, trying to match his tone.

He smirked briefly. "That—and they do their very best work after they've been booted off a case. Montgomery booted us off the Raglan murder but he didn't say anything about your mother's case and now we have a new angle to take. It's about something that started 19 years ago and involved Raglan, and him doing what he was told to cover up that it wasn't random gang violence. It wasn't just Raglan being a lazy, bad cop."

"Right," she agreed, her mind beginning to focus, returning to what they knew about her mother's case, what else they had learned in the last day. She turned to head into her office and he fell into step beside her until they stopped in front of the shutters that were her makeshift murder board. Her eyes flitted over the information she already knew, that they were both familiar with.

19 years ago—her mother's Take Back the Neighborhood campaign. The missing court file her mom had requested a week before she'd been killed.

"Your mom must have had personal papers, an appointment book, something that could tell you what she was working on before she died. And maybe even going back as far as 19 years ago," Castle said and she somehow wasn't surprised that his thoughts had followed hers to the missing court file.

"She did but I went through all that nine years ago and there's nothing."

"A lot's happened since then," he pointed out mildly. "Maybe you missed something. And you know what they say, two heads are better than one."

She managed a teasing smile. "Especially when one of those heads is a brilliant crime-solver?"

"Well, I am known for my insight into crime," he smirked, preening a little.

"I was talking about myself," she deadpanned.

He inclined his head to her, grinning. "Touché."

She found herself laughing a little before she'd even realized she was going to, surprising herself. It was just… him, she thought, her chest filling with warmth. His presence, his company, lifted her heart, made it easier for her to smile and laugh, remember to find humor when she could.

"So where are your mom's personal papers?" he asked after a moment.

"My dad has them all boxed up at his place. I'll call him and ask him to bring them over."

He nodded and then slipped an arm around her shoulder, bringing her in to brush a quick kiss to her temple. "I'm going to go back to the loft, get the information we've found on Dick Coonan and bring it all over so we have everything with us, just in case we think of something new."

"Okay," she agreed. "See you later."

She called her dad the moment Castle left. She didn't attempt to explain anything about Raglan on the phone but just asked her dad to bring the boxes of her mom's personal papers over.

Her dad agreed and it was only after he arrived, having brought two file boxes full of her mom's notebooks, her personal appointment book, the papers and pictures her mom had had on her desk in the study in their old apartment at the time her mom had died, that she told him a carefully edited story about Raglan's murder. She didn't mention Vulcan Simmons or even what Raglan had said about this starting 19 years ago. It had become something like instinct now for her always to watch her words when it came to what she told her dad, always careful to try not to worry him. It was ingrained in her to be reticent, especially about her work, after the years when her dad had not been able to cope with anything and even now, years later, some niggling worry lingered, although she tried to deny it.

She didn't tell him in so many words that she was looking into her mom's case again but then she didn't need to. She hadn't mentioned it to her dad before because she didn't like reminding her dad about her mom's case, how they still didn't know why. But now, after asking for her mom's personal papers, her dad would obviously guess.

As usual when her mom's case came up, her dad's face seemed to age visibly over the course of just a few minutes, the lines etched around his eyes and his mouth deepening, his eyes clouding over. He was silent for a long minute after she finished speaking and then he sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose in one of his characteristic gestures when he was worried. (Kate suddenly had a vivid flash of memory of the way her mom used to smile gently and kiss her dad lightly on his forehead, where his frown lines formed, or on the bridge of his nose, when she felt that her husband was worrying too much. She remembered too the way her dad had always smiled and sometimes laughed when her mom had done that. Kate's heart pinched.)

"Katie, are you sure about this?"

Kate blinked at her father even as she felt a faint frown forming. How could her father ask her that? "Of course I'm sure."

"I don't like it," her dad sighed. "I feel like you're running headlong into danger."

She made a small face of understanding. "I know, Dad, but I didn't go looking for this. Raglan contacted me and then he was shot right in front of me because of what happened to Mom and I'm a cop, Dad. I can't just let that go. I have to find out the truth, seek justice, not just because it's my job but because it's what Mom taught me to do."

"Your mom was a believer in the truth and an advocate for justice but Katie-girl, your life is worth more than this quest and your mom would be the first person to tell you that. I saw the reports of the shooting on the news and I may not be an expert but that didn't look like something an amateur could do. What's to stop whoever did this from coming after you too?" He paused and then went on, his voice trembling slightly, "You're all I have left, Katie."

She reached out and took her dad's hand, wishing she could promise him she would be fine but she couldn't lie to her father like that, even if he would believe her, which he wouldn't. "I know you're worried, Dad, but I am a trained cop. I have a gun and I do know how to protect myself."

Her dad didn't look like her words had reassured him at all. If anything, he looked even more concerned. "That's not all I'm worried about, Katie. If there's one thing I learned from the years I spent drowning my sorrows, it's that there's more than one way to lose a life. You told me that too, if you'll remember, years ago when you told me that you'd stopped looking into your mom's case. Told me that you'd finally realized that you were losing yourself to it and you needed to stop, just set it aside before it swallowed you whole. And now you're looking into your mom's case again."

She inwardly flinched as she tended to in the rare times when her dad referred to his struggles with alcoholism so directly. Was she falling down the rabbit hole again, she wondered. She knew—all the more after the way she'd lost control in the interrogation of Vulcan Simmons—that her mom's case had a way of getting under her skin, blinding her to all else. But she didn't think she was drowning in her obsession this time. She really didn't. It wasn't the same. She wasn't poring over her mom's case at all hours of the day or night when she was off-duty, wasn't constantly thinking about her mom's case in her mind, her thoughts going in circles over all the dead-ends in her mom's case file. "I know, Dad," she finally answered slowly. "But it's different this time. I'm not going to get lost in this again. But this—this is something I need to do, for myself, for you, for Mom. And we have new information now, information I didn't have back then. I… I feel like this is my chance, Dad, to finally put all this to rest."

Her dad only shook his head a little and sighed. "You've made up your mind, Katie, I can see that and I know you too well to think that anything I say will make you change your mind."

"Dad, you know I always listen to you," she protested softly.

Her dad managed a faint, rather tired, if affectionate, smile. "You listen to me, yes, Katie, but then you make your own decisions. You always have and as much as I worry about you, I don't want that to change. Just… be careful, okay?"

She gave him a small, reassuring smile. "I will. And Dad, for what it's worth, I'm not doing any of this alone. Castle is helping me." Her voice softened unconsciously on the last words.

Her dad's expression lightened more at this than it had since he had arrived. "Good. That reminds me, where is Rick?"

"Actually, I expect he'll be here any minute now. He just went back to his place to get some papers and information he kept in his safe." She paused, glancing at her watch, and then went on, with a more normal smile and tone, "Actually, Dad, if you haven't had lunch yet, do you want to stay and have lunch? There's a pretty good deli nearby that delivers sandwiches or we could get a pizza or something. I'm sure Castle will be ready for lunch when he arrives."

Her dad smiled, clearly making an effort to look more cheerful. "Do I ever turn down a chance to spend more time with you, Katie-girl? And sandwiches sound great."

Kate was unsurprised at her dad's choice. He didn't much like Chinese, she knew, which was why she hadn't suggested it, and her dad didn't eat pizza often. She got up and went to kitchen drawer where she kept the delivery menus, finding the one for the deli and handing it to her dad.

It wasn't quite one o'clock yet and she calculated that if she ordered the sandwiches in the next few minutes, Castle would arrive while they were waiting. She knew Castle's order.

She called in the order and then sat back down, deliberately avoiding any further mention of her mom's case, while she entertained her dad by telling him a little bit about the more amusing parts of the case involving Zalman Drake and then retelling some of the latest tales of high school life she'd heard from Alexis as they waited for Castle.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: The conversation between Jim and Kate was inspired in part by jareya's wonderful "Hi Dad" and the Knockdown-based chapter in that fic._

 _I hope everyone had very happy holidays and wishing you all the best in the New Year!_


	15. Chapter 14: Knockdown 2

Author's Note: I decided it was only fitting to post this second chapter based on "Knockdown" that revolves so much around Johanna Beckett on January 9th. Some more familiar dialogue ahead and partly inspired by the fact that in canon, Jim Beckett and Castle were originally supposed to meet in that episode. (Also, the scene with Martha and Castle is one of my favorite Martha scenes, after only the one at the end of "He's Dead, She's Dead," so I had to include it.)

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 14_

Castle entered the loft and headed straight into his study, first going to the safe to get the stack of papers that were Dick Coonan's financial records for the year before and after Johanna Beckett's murder, and then turning on his electronic story board and opening up the file labeled simply "Beckett" which contained the electronic version of the murder board that Beckett had up on her shutters. Working quickly, he started entering in summaries of what little additional knowledge they had gained from John Raglan and adding in Raglan as another, related victim.

"What if it had been you?"

He started a little, turning around to realize his mother had entered his study without his even realizing it. "I didn't know you were home," he said automatically.

"I heard about the shooting on the news. It could have been you, you know, or Katherine."

He flinched in spite of himself at the brutal statement that Beckett could have been shot. He knew that—God knows he knew that better than anyone. But oddly, it had never really occurred to him either at that moment or afterwards that he was in any real danger. Silly of him, he supposed, but it was the truth. "I'm fine. Kate is fine," he said as reassuringly as he could.

His mother came closer. "Richard, this isn't one of your books. You don't know the ending. You were just lucky yesterday."

He managed a faint simulacrum of his usual insouciant smile. "You're over-reacting, Mother. Where is this coming from?"

And then realized his mistake as his mother gasped a little, tears starting in her eyes. He suddenly noticed with a pang of guilt the age lines around her mouth that appeared deeper than usual in her emotion. He didn't often think that his mother looked her age—she had a complicated beautifying, anti-aging regimen that he didn't understand at all except that it cost him a nice bundle of money on a regular basis in an attempt to fight off the effects of the years—but for once, in her worry, he could see in her face the toll of the last two years, especially, since he had started shadowing Beckett. (Not that he would ever say such a thing to his mother; he wasn't suicidal.)

"How the hell can you ask me that?" she demanded, her voice trembling ever so slightly. "Think about how much you love Alexis and that is how much I love you and don't you dare ask me where this is coming from!" She broke off on something like a suppressed sob and he sighed, stepping forward and wrapping his arms around his mother in a hug of mingled reassurance and apology.

"Sorry, Mother," he said softly. And he was. He'd forgotten—or let himself forget—in his overriding preoccupation with Kate at the moment that his usual, teasing, even sniping interaction with his mother masked the reality of just how deep and true the bond between him and his mother was. He didn't think about it often, not anymore; he was a grown man and his attention was almost entirely focused on Alexis and on Beckett these days. And it was true that he often found his mother to be over-the-top, melodramatic, somewhat aggravating, and not exactly restful company (to say nothing of her flamboyant taste in clothing). But for all that, his mother had been all he had for more than half his life and for all his complaining about her, he relied on her presence in his life. His mother and Alexis were the two red-headed centers of his life, around whom he orbited as an adoring satellite. (Beckett had, of course, become the third person around whom his life revolved.)

His mother clutched him for a moment and then drew back, straightening up in a way that was more like the Martha Rodgers he knew so well, showing the indomitable spirit of hers that he knew so well. "You have gotten through most of your life on your wit, charm, and no small amount of talent. But that is the real world out there and you can't charm your way out of a bullet."

Some corner of his mind thought that he wished he could make some lighthearted quip about his mother complimenting him but it wasn't the time—even he, with his inappropriate sense of humor knew that—and he was in no state to find anything funny anyway. He sighed. "I know, Mother, but what am I supposed to do? Kate is a cop; she's going to be out there chasing killers and I'm… her partner." He paused. "You aren't going to ask me to quit, are you?"

His mother sighed. "I know you love Katherine. Anyone with eyes can see how much you love her. And no, I'm not going to ask you to quit. I know you too well to think you'd listen even if I did ask. I just want to make sure you know what you're doing, that you think and be a little more careful. None of your usual reckless, impulsive behavior, Richard."

"I am not reckless and impulsive," he protested automatically.

His mother didn't deign to respond to this admittedly inaccurate statement of self-defense in so many words; she only raised an eloquent eyebrow and he felt himself flushing a little—damn it—suddenly feeling as if he were a young boy again who'd been caught out in some mischief.

"I won't be reckless or impulsive," he amended instead. "Kate won't really let me be that reckless."

"Katherine is far more sensible than you ever were."

He opened his mouth to protest instinctively but then closed it again because it was, after all, true. He knew that, even if he would rather have faced off against a tiger empty-handed than admit it out loud. "I'll be careful, Mother," he promised, trying not to sound quite as abashed as he felt.

"You had better be, Richard, because if you make me have to explain to Alexis that you've been—that something has happened to you, I swear I will dig you up and kill you again myself," his mother vowed with a flash of her usual spirit and—naturally—her usual dramatic flair. (Nothing could quench his mother's instinct for drama for long; Martha Rodgers was irrepressible.)

He managed a faint flicker of a smile at the illogic of the statement but only promised, soberly, "I will try to be careful. I'd never want to leave Alexis alone."

His mother nodded. "I do know that so just keep Alexis in mind when you and Katherine are out there."

"But I don't want Alexis to worry," he cautioned.

His mother gave him a look. "Richard Castle, just who do you think I am?"

He opted not to answer that question, discretion being the better part of valor.

"I never had any intention of mentioning any of this to Alexis. However, Alexis is not blind; I imagine she understands enough to be worried about you and Katherine as it is so it won't matter if I say anything or not."

"Still." He knew that Alexis did worry about him and Kate but to the extent that he could, he didn't want Alexis to be exposed to the brutal realities of being a cop. Not ever. He inwardly sighed. If he had his way, he would keep Alexis safely out of any danger or from being exposed to any harsh realities of the world, thought for a moment longingly of the hypothetical convent that would be guarded like Fort Knox where he could be relatively sure his little girl was shielded from all harm.

He bent and kissed his mother's cheek as he occasionally did in tender moments. "I need to go out again and help Kate and I don't know how late I'll be so will you stay home this evening with Alexis?"

"Of course, Richard."

He gave his mother a brief smile. "Thank you, Mother."

"Just remember to be careful," were his mother's parting words before she left his study.

Castle grimaced a little as he quickly saved the contents of Johanna Beckett's electronic case file onto a flash drive and then finished gathering up the papers he had before he left the loft.

He blinked and smiled, unconsciously straightening his shoulders almost imperceptibly, when he entered Beckett's apartment again to see Jim Beckett hovering behind Beckett.

Beckett took the stack of papers from him and then he pressed the flash drive into her hand as well. He saw the little flicker of amusement cross her face as she saw that the flash drive was in the shape of Darth Vader, the helmet pulling off to reveal the USB drive.

Beckett retreated into her office to put the papers away, leaving him to greet Jim.

He reached out to shake Jim's hand and then was a little surprised as Jim instead pulled him into a half-hug. "It's good to see you, Rick."

"It's always nice to see you too, sir," he answered, falling back into formality automatically.

Jim stepped back and gave him a look. "Now, Rick, I've told you not to call me sir. It makes me feel old."

He laughed slightly, relaxing. He was being ridiculous to tense up around Jim Beckett. Jim might be the father of the woman he was in love with but, he reminded himself, he liked Jim Beckett personally and he knew, more importantly, that Jim liked him and approved of his relationship with Kate. (Amazingly enough.) "Why don't you join us for lunch, Jim?" he suggested. "I'm sure Kate will be glad to spend more time with you."

Jim grinned and Castle heard the welcome sound of Kate laughing a little from behind him.

"I've already beat you to it, Castle. We ordered sandwiches from Mike's Deli a little while ago and they should arrive soon."

"Well, they say great minds think alike," Jim quipped.

Castle laughed. "Thanks. I always think it's a good sign that I can keep up with Kate's brain," he said only half-jokingly.

"It is a good sign," Jim agreed. "Katie's always been too smart for her own good."

"I'm standing right here, you know," Kate broke in but her tone was mild and her expression soft.

And Castle was struck, as he always was when he saw Kate with her father, at how different she was around Jim. Still whip-smart—nothing changed that—but softer, somehow, the sharper edges of her Beckett-ness smoothed out. He could never think of her as Katie; the name was too childish-sounding, was entirely incongruous with the strong-willed, hard-nosed detective he knew best. But when he saw her with Jim, he could imagine her as Katie, before her mother's death had left such a jagged scar on her soul, before Jim's own alcoholism had hardened her independence into a wall of distance, before years of being a homicide detective had toughened her spirit yet further.

And it never failed to make his heart turn into a soft, melting thing in his chest, filling with protectiveness of a sort he didn't often feel where Beckett was concerned, the sort of driving wish to shield her from all sorrow or danger or harsh realities that he felt for Alexis. He tried, as much as possible, to keep his protective instincts reined in where Beckett was concerned and he was generally successful at it because Beckett was, under normal circumstances, about as helpless and in need of his protection as a saber-toothed tiger. (He was thankful that Beckett's demeanor helped keep his well-honed protective instincts mostly dormant because he was fairly certain that if he didn't, it might well sound the death knell for their relationship. Beckett wasn't the type to put up with being protected in that way or treated as if she were some delicate flower in need of protection. His protectiveness towards Beckett was mostly limited to needing to stay by her side, to have her back.)

"So, Rick, how have you been?" Jim asked, sitting down on the couch where he had been sitting when Castle entered the apartment before he'd stood up to greet him. "Katie was just telling me a little about the Zalman Drake case you recently worked on. She tells me you were just as much a fan of Drake's Magic Shop as she was years ago."

Castle smiled and easily fell into conversation with Jim, lightly relating some stories of his childhood times in Drake's Magic Shop.

Beckett was, rather uncharacteristically, silent, not contributing much to the conversation, but Castle sensed her gaze on him occasionally and saw her faint smile when he glanced at her. He knew, although she had never told him so, that she liked that he and Jim got along so well, so in the handful of times that he and Jim had been in company along with Kate, she tried to stay in the background as much as possible—which, admittedly, wasn't much. Whether she spoke or not, Kate had too much presence, too forceful a personality, to ever really fade into the background, and both he and Jim were too attuned to her to ignore her and they both turned to her on a regular basis.

A knock on the door momentarily interrupted the conversation and Kate immediately stood up, waving at them to tell them to stay where they were. "That must be the sandwiches. I'll get them."

Castle grasped her wrist before she could leave and slipped his credit card into her hand, deliberately closing her fingers around it. "I'll get lunch for us."

She narrowed her eyes at him, making no move to take his card. "I already took care of it, Castle."

Presented with a fait accompli, he had no real choice but to return his card to his wallet with as much grace as he could muster. He wasn't about to pout in front of Jim Beckett.

"Thanks for offering, Rick," Jim spoke up, drawing Castle's attention back to him.

He managed a faint smile. "Oh of course, Jim, anytime."

Kate returned with a bag full of the sandwiches. "I'll just go get these plated up and set the table for us to eat at. You two stay there and chat some more. I'll let you know when it's ready."

"All right but let us know if you need a hand, Katie," Jim agreed and they both watched as Katie moved away into the kitchen.

Jim turned away and met Castle's eyes, his expression abruptly sobering, and Castle realized that Jim wasn't nearly as relaxed as he had appeared to be. Lines of worry bracketed his mouth now.

"I'm worried about her, Rick," Jim began quietly, carefully keeping his voice pitched low enough that there was no way Kate would be able to understand the words from the kitchen, even if she was still in view thanks to the open floor plan of her apartment.

Castle glanced at Beckett before he turned to Jim, his own expression serious. "I can imagine," he said very softly. And so he could. He was concerned for Beckett himself—more so after seeing the way she had gone after Vulcan Simmons in the box, losing control of her temper in a way that Beckett never did and certainly not when she was on a case. And more than that, he understood because he was a father too and he knew how fathers worried.

"I'm glad she has you when she's looking into Johanna's case again but I can't like it, Rick," Jim murmured. "I don't know how much Katie's told you about why she stopped looking into her mom's case the last time."

"She's told me a little," he responded, remembering, again, what she'd told him, that she'd realized that if she kept looking into it, it would destroy her. She had not said much beyond that, not in all the time since then, but he could guess at how hard it had been for her, knew how much her mother's case haunted her. And he knew, too, how driven Beckett was; she didn't give up, on anything, and where her mother's case was concerned, she would be even less inclined to do so, all her fierce stubbornness coming to the fore. She had called it an obsession, he remembered, when she'd been talking to Royce on the phone, and knowing Beckett the way he did, he knew she hadn't used the word lightly. An obsession was the right word; it must have consumed her every waking moment when she hadn't been on duty. And he already knew that Beckett tended to forego sleep and meals when she was hot on the trail of a case so her mother's case, which was so intensely personal for her, must have been even worse.

Jim sighed a little, his expression darkening a little with the memory. "I'll never forget the look in her eyes the day she told me that she was going to stop looking into her mom's case…" he trailed off with an almost imperceptible shudder. "She said she needed to stop because it was eating up her entire life to an unhealthy extent. She… she begged my forgiveness, as if there was anything at all to forgive, but I told her I understood and I was even relieved…"

Jim broke off and looked away while Castle averted his eyes in turn to look at Kate. He could imagine the scene, imagine Kate looking gaunt and thin almost to the point of being emaciated, her eyes haunted, as she told this to Jim. It had taken all she had to put her mom's case aside—but Beckett had done it.

And then he had come along and pried into Johanna Beckett's case file, he thought, with a sudden surge of guilt twisting his gut up into knots. He wasn't usually given to regret or self-recrimination but when it came to Kate, to Johanna Beckett's murder, it was different. Now, thinking about it, he was momentarily amazed all over again that Kate had forgiven him at all, had let him be her partner again. He could tell himself—and he had—a hundred times that he hadn't really known, hadn't realized just what Johanna Beckett's case had done to Beckett in the past but somehow it didn't really help. If ever the road to hell was paved with good intentions, it was when it came to Johanna Beckett's murder. He had only wanted to help Beckett, had thought in his own arrogance and naiveté that his greater resources would make it possible to solve the mystery of Johanna Beckett's murder, would heal the still-bleeding wound of Johanna's death. Instead, he had nearly gotten kicked out of Beckett's life for good and then he had stupidly gotten himself taken hostage by Dick Coonan and forced Beckett to shoot Coonan before getting any answers.

He remembered, too, what Raglan had said in the coffee shop, that Coonan's death had made some unidentified "people" take notice. Another domino falling as a result of his own blind meddling, the ripple effects still spreading. And whatever happened going forward because of Johanna Beckett's case, too, would be on him.

Jim straightened up, visibly composing himself, as he faced Castle again. "I've come to peace with losing Johanna but I worry about Katie because I don't think she's found peace herself, not really. She says she's fine and not losing herself again but I worry. I know my daughter." He paused and then met Castle's eyes directly. "Please, Rick, don't let her lose another twelve years of her life to this."

Castle swallowed hard. Oh god. Oh damn. He hadn't expected this. Had not expected the weight of Jim Beckett's expectations or his request. "Jim, I…" he began and then needed to clear his throat a little, partly to organize his thoughts more, before he went on, quietly, "I understand your worry but I—I don't think I can ask Kate to be less than she is." He didn't. And he felt apprehension twist his heart sharply. He understood Jim's worry—he did and he was concerned too—but at the same time, persuading Beckett to stop looking into her mother's case, now that so much had happened... No, he couldn't really see that going well. He believed—no, he _knew_ that Beckett loved him but her mother's case had been—probably still was—the most important thing in Beckett's life, was the single most formative event of her life, and he couldn't imagine that Beckett would react well to being asked to choose between her mother's case and just about anything else. He didn't doubt that she would see it that way, as being asked to make a choice, and in one sense, she would be right. And how could he ask it of her? He knew how driven she was, what a spine of steel she had—he loved that about her. Her incredible, almost boundless strength of personality, of character, were what had drawn him in from the beginning, when combined with the glimpses he'd had of her wounded heart, her lingering vulnerabilities.

If it came to that, what a terrible, heartbreaking irony it would be if her very force of will, all that drove her to pursue a case so ferociously, the part of her that still amazed and attracted him every day, turned out to be the very thing that eventually drove them apart… Oh god. His heart clenched at the very thought of anything coming between him and Kate, of losing her in any way. He loved her, he would always love her, and he was terrifyingly, heart-stoppingly certain that if he ever lost Kate, he would never recover from it. Kate was the love of his life.

Jim sighed again, softly. "I understand, Rick, but if you love her, I'm asking you to try. For Katie's sake, for the sake of the future she deserves to have."

Castle shut his eyes briefly and then opened them again, glanced quickly at Kate, his heart twisting as he saw the very faint smile curving her lips as she moved around the kitchen. "I will try," he promised and then added, his voice lowering yet further, "I don't think there's anything I wouldn't do for her."

Jim managed a small smile and then reached out and put his hand on Castle's shoulder for a moment, giving it a brief pressure. "Thank you, Rick."

Castle found he couldn't quite meet Jim's eyes but he managed to force the words out, the only real reassurance he could think to say, "I do love her."

Jim's expression softened. "I know you do."

At that somewhat inopportune moment, Kate returned to the front room. "Everything is ready for lunch. Dad, I hope you haven't been telling Castle any embarrassing stories about me."

Jim blinked and then managed a somewhat teasing smile for her benefit. "Not really. I just told Rick how you refused to have a nightlight when you were little."

It wasn't entirely untrue except Jim had told him the story about the nightlight last year back when he and Jim had first met.

Castle followed Jim's cue and pasted on his best, amused smirk. "I guess you were always stubborn, huh, Beckett?"

Kate narrowed her eyes at Jim although a smile was playing around her lips. "No more stories from my childhood, Dad. I already told you that you weren't supposed to tell Castle any stories about me, remember?"

"I was only going to mention your third grade school play," Jim said with spurious innocence.

"Don't you dare."

Castle noted that Kate was actually blushing—which was adorable—even as he gave her a look of exaggerated disappointment. This had started as a distraction but he really did want to make her smile. He knew perfectly well that this day and this case were going to be hard for her so he wanted to give her a reason to smile now.

He sometimes felt as if he spent at least half his waking moments trying to make Beckett smile, treasuring every single one, the small closed-mouth smiles, the bright, wide smiles that showed her teeth and lit up her eyes, even the reluctant ones where she bit her lip but couldn't keep her smile from escaping in spite of herself and ducked her head in a futile attempt to hide her smile. There was, he had long ago decided, almost nothing in the world quite as adorable as a somewhat sheepish Beckett, who couldn't hide that he could make her laugh even against her will. "Oh, Beckett, have a heart. I grew up in theatres, watching all sorts of plays. Surely you won't deny me the chance to hear about your childhood thespian skills?"

"I wouldn't say 'skill' was the appropriate word to describe it," Jim said dryly.

"Dad!"

Castle couldn't help but laugh. "That's okay, Beckett. As my mother would say, we're not all meant to be actors."

"Still. No more stories, Dad," Kate told Jim with mock sternness as they sat down at the table.

Jim lifted up his hands in laughing surrender. "Okay, Katie, no more stories, I promise."

Castle pasted on an exaggerated pout. "Beckett, I can't believe you're depriving me of a chance to hear all the stories about your past."

Kate gave him a narrow-eyed look, belied by the upward quirk of the corners of her lips, the warm humor in her tone. "Don't be silly, Castle. Just eat your sandwich, will you, and try to behave."

He obeyed, unsurprised to note that Kate had unerringly ordered his favorite sandwich from Mike's Deli. He varied his sandwich orders but by now, he thought that Kate could probably guess his order anywhere they went. He loved it, how well she knew him, as well as he knew her.

Lunch passed pleasantly in easy, generally light conversation, although there were unspoken undercurrents that Castle was sure they were all aware of, even as they all steadfastly ignored them. Jim's good humor was just a shade too perfect to be entirely unfeigned, even if Castle hadn't already known from their conversation before lunch that Jim was worried. And Kate was, he could tell (and suspected Jim could too), making an effort to smile and chat blithely and avoiding as much as possible any mention of work so as not to worry Jim. And he—well, he was used to using humor to deflect and avoid serious conversations. But at the moment, for once in his life, he couldn't even identify exactly what he felt or wanted to avoid; all he knew for certain was that he needed to be here for Kate. He owed it to her for the way he had started all this by prying into her mom's case but aside from all that, he wanted to be here for Kate because he loved her and he always, always wanted to be the person standing beside her, supporting her in any way that he could.

The sandwiches from Mike's Deli always came with potato chips but Kate had, as usual, left the potato chips only for him and Jim. But then, also as usual, she reached over to steal a few of the chips off his plate. (It never failed to tickle him, this occasional way she had of stealing food from his plate. It was playful, teasing, had become a running joke between them—helped along by the fact that when they went to Remy's, he always made a habit of stealing some of her fries—he adored it because he knew Kate too well not to appreciate the significance of it, evidence of how comfortable she was with him, how much her instinctive, automatic reticence had vanished around him.)

He gave her a look of exaggerated reproach. "You would steal food from me in front of your father?"

She pretended to think about it for a moment and then reached over and filched another chip, smirking at him. "Yes, I would. Why, you want to do something about it?"

His heart danced a little in his chest, as it tended to whenever she teased him, whenever he saw the way her eyes lit up with sparks of green, mischief and laughter glinting in her eyes. Beckett's smiles had always had the ability to wipe his mind clear of just about anything else but oh, these bright, warm teasing smiles of hers, the way she looked at him with such affection mingled in with the humor in her eyes, sometimes made it hard to breathe. His heart always swelled with so much love and gratitude to the Fates or whatever for bringing Kate into his life, for letting him be the one Kate teased and smiled at like this.

He made a face and then heaved an exaggerated, beleaguered sigh. "Oh fine, but only because I've always told Alexis that it's nice to share."

Kate laughed and grinned at him as she stole yet another chip. "Very generous of you, Castle," she mocked.

The sound of Jim's laughter drew Castle's gaze away from Kate and he saw Jim's smiling glance moving between him and Kate. And Castle recognized with a flash of insight that Jim's smile was quite real now, that something about his and Kate's humorous little exchange had reassured Jim. But then he supposed that wasn't surprising either. Jim knew Kate, better than anyone else, so Jim of all people would understand what it meant that Kate was enough at ease with him—and with her father right there—to tease Castle, to show the playful side of herself.

The rest of lunch passed quickly and Kate firmly resisted Jim's offer to help clean up afterwards.

Jim shook Castle's hand first, clapping his other hand on Castle's shoulder in a gesture that felt somehow… paternal, not that Castle had any personal experience with what a paternal gesture from a father to his son would be like. "Take care of yourself, Rick."

"You too, Jim. You should come over to the loft for dinner sometime soon," he offered. "I know Alexis will be glad to see you again."

"Thank you, Rick, I'd like that."

Jim turned to Kate, wrapping his arms around her in a hug, his eyes briefly closing as he held her in the sort of embrace a man reserved for the dearest thing in the world to him. And Castle felt his heart pinch with a surge of empathy for the emotion he recognized in the way Jim hugged Kate, the look on Jim's face. He recognized the depths of love for one's child, that undying love that was so powerful it was almost physically painful at times. Jim had lost his wife; it would utterly destroy him if anything happened to Kate, Castle knew. Not that any parent ever recovered from the loss of his or her child but for Jim, who had already lost so much, it would be even worse.

"Thanks for coming, Dad," Kate said softly as she drew back.

"Just be careful, Katie, and remember what I said."

Castle glanced at Kate to see her lips tighten a little at the corners, shadows clouding her eyes, but all she said was, "I will, Dad. I'll call you, okay?"

Jim stepped back past the threshold. "I'll see you both some other time, then. Bye, Rick, Katie." He lifted a hand in farewell before he turned away to the elevator and Kate waited until the elevator door opened and Jim stepped onto it before she closed her apartment door with a soft sigh.

Castle studied her for a moment but knew better than to ask if she was okay or more specifically, what Jim had said to her. Instead, he slid his arm around her shoulders and brushed a kiss against her temple. "So how were you thinking we should go through your mom's papers?"

"Start with one box and just divide it up, I suppose," she answered slowly as they went back into her office where she'd left both boxes Jim had brought over, along with everything he had brought.

She bent and hefted up the first box and then met his questioning eyes. "I figured we can go through everything out there; it's more comfortable."

"Okay," he agreed, lifting up the second box and following her out into the main room.

He settled on the couch while Kate sat on the floor, one of her shoulders resting against his knee, and pulled the boxes towards her.

Silence settled over the room, broken only by the rustle of papers and the occasional comment or question as they both started looking through the contents of the first box containing notebooks and other papers that had been in Johanna Beckett's desk when she'd been killed.

He paged through a notebook filled with Johanna Beckett's now-familiar messy handwriting. He had done some research into graphology and spoken with a few graphologists years ago for one of his earliest books where handwriting analysis had been required for one of the clues. He found himself remembering that research as he looked through these papers for whatever they might tell him of the type of person Johanna Beckett had been, aside from what he'd been able to guess from Kate's stories. He would have wanted to be able to meet Johanna Beckett just as the mother of the woman he was in love with but the more he heard from Kate about Johanna, the more his regret at never knowing Johanna Beckett took on a more personal dimension, made him feel a pang of loss for his own sake. Everything he learned about Johanna convinced him that she must have been an admirable, impressive woman in her own right, intelligent, dedicated, idealistic, and ambitious—qualities she had passed on to her daughter—and a woman that he would have enjoyed getting to know.

His thoughts were interrupted by a soft sound from Kate that in anyone else would probably have been described as a whimper, as she sucked in a breath. He glanced up to see Kate reaching into the box and lifting out an old, faded piece of pink construction paper folded in half to form a card. On the front of the card had been drawn a clumsy, crooked bouquet of flowers by a childish hand and then Kate opened the card with a hand that was trembling almost imperceptibly to reveal the straggling, childish letters reading "Happy Mommy's Day. Love, your Katie."

Castle's heart hurt.

Kate let out a shaky breath, running her fingers lightly over the words. "This… this is the first Mother's Day card I ever gave my Mom. I… I didn't know she'd kept it."

He put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it a little. "Of course she kept it, Kate. She was a mom. Do you think I haven't kept every Father's Day card Alexis has ever given me?" He had a stack of cards in the drawer of his desk in his study, every card for every occasion—birthday, Father's Day, some Star Wars Day cards (what, he'd made sure to celebrate Star Wars Day with Alexis every year), even one Pi Day card (another "holiday" he'd made a point of celebrating—by baking a pie with Alexis's help)—which Alexis had ever given him.

He also kept in another separate drawer inside his nightstand, carefully hidden to prevent Alexis from ever finding them, a few cards which Alexis had made for Meredith for various birthdays and Mother's Day, cards which he had found left behind after one of Meredith's flying visits, and one of those plaster casts of Alexis's tiny hand prints which Alexis had made in school for one Mother's Day, which Meredith had not taken with her. His heart twisted again, this time with regret and anger at Meredith and grief for Alexis's sake, the same emotions he always felt when he was reminded of Meredith's inadequacy as a mother, what Alexis would never have.

Even if he hadn't already guessed it from all that Kate had said about her, the very fact that Johanna Beckett had kept the Mother's Day card from Kate in her desk all those years told him volumes about the sort of person, the sort of mother, Johanna Beckett had been. Johanna Beckett had been a _mom_.

"Still." Kate put the card carefully aside and then shifted closer to him, leaning against his leg and resting her cheek against his knee for a moment as he threaded his fingers through her hair in a way that he knew she found comforting. "I didn't realize she'd kept it." She choked on a small laugh. "It's such a terrible drawing."

He smiled faintly. "It kinda is," he agreed, gently teasing. "I can see you're not an artist."

She swatted at his leg in retaliation. "Shut up, Castle."

He tugged gently on a lock of her hair. "It's not nice to hit people."

"It's not nice to pull people's hair," she parroted back at him.

"I thought you'd gotten used to me pulling on your pigtails," he retorted immediately, his heart lifting at this sign that Beckett—his Beckett—was back, her wit returning.

She rolled her eyes. Yes, his Beckett was definitely back. "You are never going to let me forget I said that, are you?"

"Never," he confirmed immediately. His voice softened, the memory of that moment returning to him. "It was the first time you'd said anything outright to indicate that I wasn't just an annoying pest, that you wanted me to stick around."

She turned her head to press her lips against his knee, a caress he swore he felt even through the material of his pants. She didn't say anything but then again, she didn't need to. She had said she wanted him around when she finally found out who had ordered her mother's murder and whatever happened with Raglan's case, whatever they found out about her mother's case, he would stay with her.

He stroked her hair in silence for a minute.

"What if we don't find anything?" she suddenly blurted out. "We're almost through the first box and we haven't seen anything useful. And where will that leave us? We're still kicked off the Raglan case and we won't have found anything more on my mom's case; we'll be stuck. Again."

"Hey, don't think like that, Beckett," he said gently, switching back into using her precinct name. In the rare times that Kate needed reassurance, he knew it helped to remind her of who she was—Detective Kate Beckett, the best homicide detective in the City. "We're not done yet, we still have an entire other box to go through, and even then, I wouldn't count us out. We'll think of something. No giving up, okay, Beckett?"

She smiled faintly. "No giving up," she agreed and straightened up as she returned to looking through the last remaining contents of the first box.

In turn, he finished going through the notebook he'd been paging through, without finding anything, and then moved on to the contents of the second box of papers.

They worked in silence for a while longer, both of them systematically going through Johanna Beckett's papers and notepads and other miscellaneous things, all that was left to give evidence of a busy, dedicated legal career. They found printed out copies of cases, highlighted and with the occasional handwritten annotation in the margins, notepads of things Johanna had jotted down, a few legal forms, some copies of legal briefs. It all must have been related to cases she had been working on when she'd died but if she'd included the actual name of her client, it was in some shorthand that only Johanna had known about. Nothing that would be particularly helpful to them. Castle was no expert but even to his novice eyes, he could see that Johanna Beckett must have been a very good lawyer, to say nothing of an idealistic, diligent one.

Kate sat back with a little sigh. "There's nothing in her appointment book. Nothing that I can make sense of, anyway. She had her own system. My dad and I could never figure it out."

Castle was momentarily distracted as he'd found a treasure trove of pictures, mostly of Kate, from when she'd been 19. Kate, looking so young and so poignantly happy. His heart ached a little at the pictures, as cute and even amusing as they were, just from the difference he could see in Kate's smile now. Kate looked so heartbreakingly _young_ in the pictures, and he didn't mean in years, although of course she had been so young then. But the difference was in her face when she smiled—back then, she'd been so… untouched by grief or violence, so confident that the world was at her feet, and that blithe confidence showed in Kate's smile. And it wasn't in Kate's smile anymore, as lovely as her smile was and as much as he loved to see it. Kate's smile, even now, was a little tempered, a little cautious, the smile of someone who'd grown up and suffered and knew all too well just how fragile life and happiness were.

"You were adorable," he commented.

She ducked her head but he saw her small smile.

"Your mom take these?"

"Yeah, about three weeks before she died."

He went on going through the pictures. "Aw, I don't get to see you in action?" he asked in teasing disappointment as the pictures changed from Kate lacing on ice skates to Kate posing playfully next to a Christmas tree.

She gave a half-sheepish smile. "Trust me, Castle, it was not pretty."

He doubted that. "Oh, now I have to see it." He knew he was getting distracted from their purpose but he couldn't resist as he held up the sheets of film to the sunlight, trying to make out the pictures.

Wait. Something was off.

He frowned a little. "Hmm."

"What?"

It might be nothing, was probably nothing, but any little oddity might be a clue. The odd sock, as Beckett had once told him, a philosophy he'd repeated in the Nikki Heat books. "There's 24 exposures on this film but there's only 20 pictures."

She frowned a little and pushed herself up, crowding in beside him as he shifted on the couch to hold the film up against the light for a better look at the pictures.

"What is it?"

He was confused now. "An empty street."

"That's strange," she murmured. "Why would Mom have taken pictures of an empty street?"

"By accident? I've done that sometimes, had the camera go off when I was pointing it at the sidewalk or something."

"Yeah, but four times in a row, just for the last pictures on the roll?"

She had a point, as usual. "Come on, Castle. Let's take the film and get a better look at these pictures."

He followed her into her study and she took the film and put it into her scanner, opening up the pictures that were, as he'd said, of an empty street, a few trash cans.

The pictures didn't mean anything to him but beside him, he felt Kate stiffen and suck in a sharp breath and he glanced at her to see that she'd gone pale. "Castle, this is where my mom was murdered," she told him, her voice shaking almost imperceptibly.

He jerked upright as he stared at her, taking another, closer look at the pictures. "You've been there?" he blurted out, only to realize as soon as he'd said it that it was a stupid question.

She nodded, just once. "I… I had to."

He reached out and gripped her hand, squeezing it in silent sympathy and apology for his rather insensitive question. Of course she had gone to see the crime scene for her mother's case. She liked to see things for herself, with her own eyes, for everything. How much more true would that be for something as important to her as her mother's death? Knowing her, he guessed she would have gone soon after Johanna had died, some sort of tangible reminder that her mother was really gone. And she would have wanted to see, he guessed, what would have been the last thing her mother saw before she died.

Her hand tightened on his almost convulsively, telling him without words how shaken she was at this discovery. "I don't understand," she said, emotion and upset threaded through her voice. "I mean, these pictures were developed a week before she was killed."

"Why would she be taking photos of that alley?" he murmured, frowning.

"I don't know. I always thought it was just a convenient place for the killer to attack. I mean, it was dark, it was secluded…"

"What if there was more to it than that?" he asked. One of Beckett's own maxims returned to his mind—no coincidences in a murder mystery. It _couldn't_ be coincidence that Johanna Beckett had taken photos of the very alley where she would end up being murdered just weeks before she'd been killed. "What if she was looking into something that happened in that alley when they killed her?"

"Well, I'd have to go back into the old archives and reports and Captain Montgomery won't let me back in the precinct right now."

"I'll go," he volunteered immediately.

"Castle, you realize that it'll take hours. None of the old crime reports from back then are computerized so you'll need to spend hours going through the old files."

He gave her a blank look. "So?"

She made a small face, what he mentally termed her "spoilsport Beckett" face (although he would never tell her so aloud since he didn't want to be maimed), as it was the look he saw most often when she was using logic to ruin one of his stories, being the voice of reason. "So it'll be tedious and you'll be looking for the proverbial needle in a very large haystack." She hesitated and then added, more quietly, "You hate that kind of work."

And he suddenly understood what she wasn't saying, what she wouldn't say. Oh, yes, he understood. He knew her. Even now, in spite of how close they had become, she was still independent Beckett. She didn't want to ask for help, didn't really like admitting she ever needed help in the first place, and she certainly didn't like knowing that anyone would do anything disagreeable for her sake. She would never _ask_ him to do this, to spend hours in archives poring through old case files. It didn't matter that it was the only way, really, with her banned from the precinct. She still didn't feel comfortable with someone, even him, doing something for her because she couldn't do it herself—no, especially when she couldn't do it herself.

Emotion swelled up inside him, extravagant words, declarations, crowding into his throat, jamming it. He wanted to tell her he would do anything for her, that he would walk across the country to get her a blade of grass if she asked him to—but this wasn't the time for that. And beyond that, he knew that to some extent, she already knew how much he would do for her; she just wasn't comfortable with the idea of it. So all he said with feigned nonchalance was, "It'll be like doing research. And I'm used to that." So saying, he stood up, grabbing his coat and shrugging into it. "I'll be back once I've found something."

"Castle," she blurted out with sudden urgency, making him pause and look back at her.

She hesitated and then, in a little flurry of movement, hurried into her kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water and a package of cookies and then gave them to him, slipping the cookies into his coat pocket. "Here. This way you won't need to rely on the vending machine at the precinct." She gave him a slight twitch of her lips. "Okay, you can go now."

It was the smallest of gestures, really, and the words were commonplace but what he knew she meant was, _I love you_ and _thank you_.

His throat was tight with emotion, again, but he managed a faint smile. "Thanks." He dropped a quick kiss on her forehead and then he left, heading straight to the precinct.

He looked for Esposito and Ryan but they weren't at their desks so he hailed LT instead and persuaded LT to let him into archives, explaining only that he wanted to look up some old cases for research purposes.

Once LT left him alone, Castle settled into work, working backwards from a week before Johanna Beckett's murder and quickly glancing into all the old crime reports for any mention of the alley where Johanna Beckett had been murdered or the cross streets at either end of it.

Wait. He paused, suddenly remembering how Raglan had said that something that had happened 19 years ago had set the ball rolling and led to Johanna Beckett's murder. 19 years ago. He put away the reports he'd been looking into for late 1998 and went back further to 1992, 19 years ago, and anything that might have happened. Something that happened that long ago in that alley would more easily explain why Johanna Beckett, as a criminal appellate lawyer who generally didn't get involved in a criminal case until some time after the crime itself had taken place, would have taken pictures of that alley.

It was, as Beckett had accurately predicted, tedious work and under normal circumstances, he knew he would have gotten fed up and stopped within the hour. But these weren't normal circumstances. And he found it was surprisingly easy to stay focused and motivated with the memory of the expression on Beckett's face lingering in his mind. He really would do anything for her.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: Thank you, everyone, for reading. I hope these chapters on "Knockdown" are doing justice to the episode._


	16. Chapter 15: Knockdown 3

Author's Note: The last of the three chapters based on "Knockdown." As usual, there are some familiar lines of dialogue ahead. Part of this chapter was inspired by the wonderful fic by Garrae, "Will you be strong enough (to catch me when I fall for you)?" (which, if you haven't read it already, you should all go read it now.)

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 15_

Beckett—she was definitely all Beckett, with not a trace of Kate to be seen—was holding her gun when she opened her door.

"You talked to Montgomery?" he guessed.

"Yeah."

He made a face, trying to hide the terror that had gripped his heart from the moment that Montgomery had bluntly told him that Raglan's killer had been doing surveillance on Beckett.

"Castle, I need you to do something for me."

"Anything," he promised immediately, not even needing to think about it.

"Go home."

"Anything but that," he amended firmly. He should have expected this but somehow he hadn't been. "Fear does not exist in this dojo," he said with forced flippancy.

" _Castle_ , will you just—this isn't funny. You need to leave."

He abruptly sobered. "I know it's not funny. But I'm still not going anywhere."

Beckett gave an irritated huff and lifted her hands to her face in a gesture of frustration, pausing as she belatedly realized that she was still holding her gun. She put her gun down on the counter before briefly scrubbing her hands down her face, a gesture that betrayed just how agitated she was since she wasn't normally one to do such a thing. But when she lowered her hands, he saw that she'd set her jaw more firmly, determination in every line of her features.

Looking at her, every inch the tough-as-nails detective, he almost found it hard to believe that this was the same woman who had teased him and rested her head against his leg just a few hours earlier. He could almost hear the clang of a portcullis slamming down and being locked behind Kate's eyes, cutting off everything she didn't want to be seen. He fought back a renegade flicker of hurt. She had barricaded herself behind her Beckett persona as she tended to when she felt threatened and he understood that—he _did_ —but it didn't make it much easier to see. She had stopped deploying her formidable Detective Beckett poker face when it was only the two of them and he couldn't help but feel a twist of hurt to see her using it again with him. "Look, Castle, this isn't just any other case that you can shadow me on for research purposes. This guy is a trained professional and if he's coming after me, you'll just be a civilian caught in the cross fire and I can't have that happen. I signed up for this when I put on the badge; you didn't."

He felt his control on his temper beginning to slip at her impersonal words but he desperately tried to tighten his grip on it. Losing his temper wasn't going to help. "You know this isn't about that. I'm not running around after murder scenes in the middle of the night in order to satisfy some morbid curiosity. I may not have a badge—unless you count the chocolate one Alexis gave me for my birthday—but I _am_ your partner and I'm not leaving."

"Be realistic, Castle. This isn't one of your books. You don't have any combat training; you don't have a gun. This guy who shot Raglan is not an amateur and you can't—you really can't be involved with this anymore, not now with what the boys found out. You've helped enough already and I'm grateful but I can't have you running around playing cop on this!"

His upset skyrocketed at her dismissive words, her tone. She was pushing him away; she was scared and she was pushing him away. "Damn it, Beckett, will you stop talking like that? You know that my _playing cop_ isn't why I'm sticking around. I _love_ you—what the hell do you think that means if not that I'll stay with you?"

She sucked in a breath and her expression flickered for a bare moment as he saw her fight for composure, resulting in a tenuous victory as she regained some control over her expression. "Will you at least think about Alexis, then, and what this might do to her?"

His brain-to-mouth filter—never strong at the best of times—abruptly failed, the mention of Alexis, the remonstrance to think of Alexis, setting his temper alight as it tended to do. Meredith and Gina too had cast Alexis up at him during fights as if either of them were somehow more responsible for Alexis than he was and the implication always flicked on the raw. "I do think about Alexis! What kind of example for her would I be setting if I took the easy, safe way and left you alone? Some things, some people, are worth risking your life for, worth fighting for. You taught me that. And anyway, do you think Alexis would ever forgive me if I left you alone and something happened to you?"

"Better something happen to me than anything happen to you; she needs you, Castle."

Beckett sounded preternaturally calm; she was pushing him away and he knew just how strong-willed she was, how stubborn. If she had really set her mind to shutting him out, kicking him off the case, even now he wouldn't bet on his ability to make her change her mind. He felt a wave of fear mingle in with his anger, a toxic combination that eroded what little control over his words he had. "If anything happened to you, do you think I'd be much good to Alexis as a hollow shell of a man, probably drowning my sorrows in Scotch? You really think it would do Alexis any good to have a drunk for a father?"

She went white, sucking in a sharp breath. "Castle, _please_!" Her voice cracked, shocking him—and her, if the look in her eyes was any indication. And it was shocking, the sudden transformation. It was as if her Beckett wall, the iron composure she generally preserved in her professional life and behind which she'd been hiding, collapsed all at once and he was left blinking in the dust and rubble to see her, _Kate_. His Kate.

And he realized with a flash of insight mingled in with sharp regret just how much control she'd been exercising to seem so cool and composed, just how much terror she'd been concealing. Her voice had sounded almost harsh in its firmness, her words equally so, as if they were nothing more than partners and maybe friends, as if they'd never kissed, as if they weren't together, hadn't spent countless nights curled up together in the same bed. But now, when the wall gave way, he saw just how much it had cost her to seem so detached and he abruptly hated himself with a virulence that almost strangled him for what he'd said. He had wanted to break past the wall she'd put up between them and he had with a vengeance—and hurt her.

"I—I lost my mom and I couldn't stand it if I lost someone else that I—care about." Her composure wavered and she blinked rapidly, swallowing. And what little was left of his own control gave way and he finally closed the distance between them in a few long steps and pulled her into his arms, hoping his touch, his embrace, would be apology and comfort and reassurance, combined.

For a second, she resisted, stayed stiff in his arms. And then a shuddering sigh escaped her and she abruptly clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder, as she clutched him as if she were drowning and he was her life-boat. "I can't lose you, Rick," she told him, her voice shaky.

"I can't lose you either. I'd never forgive myself and I'd never ever get over it if anything happened to you." He wouldn't. He knew that. He hadn't let himself fall apart after Meredith cheated on him because Alexis had needed him and pouring all his love, all his attention, into Alexis had saved him. (There had been one night when he'd left Alexis in his mother's care and, alone, he had proceeded to get thoroughly and deliberately drunk, the one night of weakness he had allowed himself. One night where he didn't need to be an attentive father but could simply be a cuckolded, abandoned husband who hadn't been enough for his own wife.) But losing Kate—no, he would never get over it. He would never willingly abandon Alexis but he couldn't imagine being able to survive Kate's loss either, especially not if anything happened to her because of her mother's case, because of what he had done in looking into her mother's case.

"I'd never get over it either," she whispered. "But it's dangerous."

He sighed a little and pressed his lips against her hair. "I know, but you can't possibly think that I care more about staying safe than I do about you." It was possibly the most basic truth he knew right now, that any risk to himself didn't matter when it came to his need to stay with Kate. He might not have combat training but he had, in the last couple years since starting to shadow Kate, put in a lot of effort to stay in shape so he could protect her, somehow. And he knew that he would willingly give up his life to save her.

He found himself remembering something he'd read once, a quote by Lao Tzu: _being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage._ He didn't tend to think of himself as being a brave person. He was scared of spiders and insects in general; he tended to give unmanly shrieks when he was startled; he had nightmares of things happening to Alexis and now Beckett as well that kept him up at nights. But now, even knowing that some sort of professional sniper was following Beckett—or maybe especially knowing that a sniper was following Beckett—he realized just what it meant when he thought that he would do anything for her. This wasn't about his tendency to impulsiveness that had gotten him into trouble in the past (and no doubt still would); he was actually surprisingly deliberate when he thought that he would willingly give his own life if it would keep Kate safe. He would be careful—he had promised his mother and more importantly, he would always do anything to stay with Alexis—but to save Kate, he would do anything.

He still didn't think it made him brave. He was terrified but his fears were for Kate, who was, after all, the real target, and any risk to him seemed inconsequential when compared to the danger to Kate.

She shook her head a little against his shoulder. "I can't stand that you're in danger because of me."

"I'm not in danger because of you; I'm in danger because of me. It's my choice to stay with you," he countered, although he kept his voice gentle. "I won't leave you, Kate. You can't make me."

She gave a huff of breath in what might have been a distant cousin to a laugh, half-commingled with something like a strangled sob. "You're too stubborn."

If he was stubborn, what did that make her, he wondered but didn't say. "We'll just have to protect each other. As partners do."

She gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. "Partners," she repeated so quietly he had to strain to hear it.

She stayed where she was, still clinging to him, for another few seconds before she stepped back, managing a faint ghost of a smile, although it didn't reach her eyes. And as he watched, she blinked, squaring her shoulders slightly as she moved away, towards the couch. She was Beckett again, once more in control of herself, and he had another of his moments of being utterly amazed by her, by the strength of her. As much as he loved the softer, more vulnerable side of her, was humbled and privileged every day to see just how tender and loving she could be, he thought he loved her strength the most, loved the core of steel that defined her Detective Beckett persona.

"What did you find?" she asked.

He felt warmth fill his chest as he sat down on the couch, opening up the file that contained the copies he'd made of all the information he had looked up on the Bob Armen case and Joe Pulgatti. They were partners, in every way, and at that moment, he felt a sense of admittedly irrational optimism. At that moment, he couldn't imagine that they would fail to solve the Raglan case and even her mother's case too, not if they worked together.

* * *

She hadn't known.

The words kept running through Kate's mind even as she finished briefing the backup cavalry who had come in to take Lockwood and his cronies into custody and then checked on Ryan and Esposito, who were both wrapped up in blankets and undergoing the ministrations of the EMT's.

She hadn't known.

She thought it again as she looked in on the ambulance where Lockwood and the security guard which she had knocked out were secured while they were treated for their various injuries. (One of the other thugs whom she had shot inside the warehouse had already been rushed off in a separate ambulance in critical condition, while the other had died and was en route to the morgue. She pushed the thought away.)

Her duty done, she finally returned to where she wanted to be, hovering outside the ambulance and catching the tail end of the EMT's instructions to Castle to put ice on his hand if it started to swell and take a painkiller before bed, as the EMT finished wrapping a bandage around Castle's hand.

Castle grimaced as the EMT stepped out of the vehicle and she promptly climbed in to take the EMT's place.

"Hey there, Chuck Norris," she greeted him teasingly, wanting to lift the shadows from his eyes.

Castle obligingly gave a faint chuckle as he unwrapped the bandage from around his wounded hand. "How's the hand?" she asked gently, her own hands reaching out to help him rewrap the bandage.

"Ah, excruciating," he admitted, although he was trying to speak lightly.

"Mm," she murmured, finishing wrapping the bandage, her hands as gentle as she could make them. His hand, his strong, beautiful, precious hand.

"How's Ryan and Esposito?"

"Mm, mild hypothermia, wounded pride," she summarized and then added with a faint playful smirk, because she wanted to make him smile, "Guess which one will heal first."

He returned her smile, his eyes momentarily lightening, but it was brief, his flash of amusement fading until he looked weary again. She understood the feeling, was feeling the tiredness from all the emotion and exertion of the day creeping up on her too, now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

Her eyes lowered to look at his injured hand, looking bigger than usual and clumsy with the bandage wrapped around it, and on an impulse of tenderness, she bent to kiss his palm over the bandage and then briefly let her cheek rest against his hand, feeling his fingers curl lightly to caress her cheek. His hand, his large, strong hand that had held her, caressed her body countless times, and somehow in all that time, she hadn't really known or thought that his hand—that he—would be capable of physical violence.

She knew his touch now. She knew he was strong—strong enough to lift her without apparent effort—and knew that he was a good shot. But she had never thought, never believed, that he was really capable of physical violence, of hand-to-hand combat. She still remembered the way he had tried to intervene in the bar fight during the Jack Buckley case last year only to get punched in the face for his effort. For all his strength, it had never occurred to her that he was capable of inflicting violence himself. She'd always known that he was not the sort of man who would ever use force against a woman or a child or anyone weaker than him but even beyond that, she'd never really thought of him as a fighter. Still tended to think of him as needing protection, not as someone who could attack or fight back physically.

But now, she remembered the violence, the controlled brutality even, in the way he had punched Lockwood, the sound of flesh and bone giving way to the force of Castle's blows. She thought about the blood on Lockwood's face, the blood that had stained Castle's hand too before it had been cleaned.

And at that moment of seeing Castle punch Lockwood, she'd had the sudden, odd sense that she was watching a stranger pummeling Lockwood. That man beating Lockwood up with such focused rage could not be the same man who was so tender with his daughter, so loving to her. But then she'd stepped in and after a moment, he had blinked and his expression had cleared and suddenly he had been her Castle again. Her Castle, who had literally gotten his hands bloody in her defense.

She kissed his fingers above the bandage before she straightened up to meet his eyes, still keeping his hand held between both of hers. "You broke Lockwood's nose and gave him a pretty severe concussion," she told him quietly.

His expression darkened a little at the mention of Lockwood's name. "I'd have broken more than that if I could have," he muttered grimly.

"I didn't know you had that side to you," she murmured, her gaze lowering, again, irresistibly, to his injured hand. His hand that she knew would be painful and largely unusable for at least a week, probably longer. She felt as if she could cry at the very thought.

"I do when it comes to the people I care about."

The people he loved was what he meant, she knew, and again the image of him thrashing Lockwood returned to her mind. No, she hadn't known but for the first time, she'd thought that Castle was capable of killing a man with his bare hands, to defend those he loved. To protect _her_.

His expression was dark, his eyes shadowed, looking stormy gray even in the light of the ambulance. Her heart pinched a little as she suddenly realized that he wasn't entirely comfortable with his own capacity for violence. Not that he regretted it—she knew he would do it again without a blink, would kill to save her just as she would to save him—but that didn't make him comfortable with it. He wasn't, would never be, a man who liked violence, not in real life. He could—and did—write about violence, fight scenes, and watch violent movies or play video games but all that was fictional, distanced from reality.

She wanted to kiss him, distract him with the press of her lips and her body, but she couldn't, not there, not yet, not with all the cops still swarming the area. More importantly, she wanted to reassure him that she was still there with him, still his. But as usual with her, she couldn't quite find the words, was not even entirely sure exactly what she felt, so she settled for the simplest words. "Thank you, for having my back in there."

The words, simple as they were, worked. His expression cleared, softened, as he gave her one of his tender smiles that existed mostly in his eyes and only barely curved his lips. "Always."

She returned his smile but didn't say anything more, only hoped he would see all she felt in her eyes as she kept his hand cradled in both of hers.

"Beckett."

She started a little at the sound of Captain Montgomery's voice and felt Castle's hand tense in hers and begin to pull away since he knew she always tried to preserve a professional distance between them when she was on duty. But for once, she tightened her grip on his hand, not allowing the retreat, short of his forcibly yanking his hand away, which she knew he wouldn't do. They weren't in the precinct right now and he had injured himself in her defense. No, she wasn't about to let go now.

She saw Montgomery's gaze flicker down to their joined hands but he didn't react by so much as a blink as he nodded at Castle. "Castle. Glad to see you're okay." He shifted his gaze back to her. "Go home, Beckett. I just told Ryan and Esposito that I don't want to see either of their faces in the precinct for the next two days and the same goes for you too. I'll see to putting Lockwood and his henchmen away—no one gets away with abducting my people—and the paperwork on Raglan's case can wait. I'll take care of contacting the PD down in Brooklyn over Jolene Granger's case too."

She nodded. "Yes, sir." She wasn't surprised. She had known she would need to be temporarily sidelined while her actions in going into the warehouse without backup—and of shooting at Lockwood and his thugs—were reviewed by the higher-ups. Not that there was any chance at all that she'd be in trouble for it—the boys' abduction was a textbook example of exigent circumstances that more than justified immediate action—but there was always additional paperwork and an official report whenever a cop killed someone in the line of duty.

"Good. And this time, I expect my orders to be followed," Montgomery added crisply.

"Yes, sir," was all she said again. Montgomery allowed her and the boys a lot of leeway but even so, there were limits and she knew she had pushed them by her actions in not giving up even after she'd been kicked off the Raglan case.

Montgomery's expression softened faintly. "Get some rest," he told them before he headed off to talk to the uniforms still milling around the warehouse.

Thus dismissed, Kate finally released Castle's hand in order to climb out of the ambulance. He followed her rather more slowly than he normally would and she reached out and grasped his uninjured hand in hers the moment he was out. "Come on, Castle. I'll take you home."

"Are you coming back to the loft with me?"

He still sounded unlike himself, his voice weary. She stepped in closer to him, nudging his arm with hers. "You're not getting rid of me that easily, Castle," she told him lightly, wanting to make him smile again. As much as his tendency to silliness and persistent levity occasionally got on her nerves, it just seemed wrong to see him looking so somber, the tired lines in his face. It twisted her heart and made her willing to do whatever she could to cheer him up.

His grip on her hand tightened almost convulsively. "I'm never going to want to be rid of you," he said with sudden intensity.

"That's good to know," she responded, deliberately keeping her tone light, "because you're mine now and I think I'll keep you."

He gave a huff that might have been the beginnings of a laugh. "You only think you'll keep me?"

He sounded more like himself and she manufactured her best teasing smirk and put it on. "I'm indecisive, what can I say," she quipped.

He snorted. "You're the least indecisive person I've ever met."

"I make an exception when it comes to writers," she told him airily. "After all, you can never be sure that you'll really like every work written by a given author."

"Says the person who owned a copy of every single one of my books," he retorted and she suppressed a smile. Yes, that was more like the Castle she knew so well. She'd known referring to writing would distract him, rouse him out of his uncharacteristic grim torpor.

"I might have owned them all but I never said I liked all of your books." (She had liked all his books, some less than others admittedly, but she couldn't really say that she'd actually not liked any of his books.)

He pursed his lips in a mock pout. "Maybe not, but you like me anyway."

"Yeah, Castle, I like you." She'd spoken lightly but somehow the words seemed to linger in her mind, the impact of them hitting her squarely in the chest. She _did_ like him; he was her favorite person in the world. And he'd been hurt because of _her_ , because he'd been defending her. She was suddenly flooded with a relief so powerful it made her almost dizzy with it that he hadn't been injured more seriously, that it was only his hand that had been hurt and in a relatively minor way at that so he would be fine in a week's time. And she thought again that she didn't know what she would do if she ever lost Castle, if anything happened to him because of her.

"I like you too, Beckett."

His voice was humorous but also warm with affection and she gave him a quick smile, letting him see all she felt in her eyes, but all she said was, "Let's go home, Castle. It's getting late."

They had reached her car and she perforce had to release his hand for them to get into the car but she reclaimed his hand the moment they were both settled and retained her grip on his hand during the entire drive back to the loft.

The moment they entered the loft, they were greeted by Alexis leaping immediately off the couch and flying across the loft to throw herself at Castle. "Dad!"

Castle caught her in his arms with a faint grunt, pressing a kiss on her hair. "I'm fine, sweetie."

Kate wasn't given any time to enjoy the sight of Castle and Alexis as Alexis was followed almost immediately by Martha, albeit at a more sedate pace, and Kate found herself being pulled into Martha's scented embrace. "Oh Katherine, you are a sight for sore eyes."

Kate closed her eyes as she returned Martha's hug. "I'm fine, Martha," she reassured the older woman quietly.

Martha released Kate and she and Alexis smoothly switched places as Alexis gave Kate a hug in turn. "Kate, I'm glad you're okay."

Warmth blossomed in Kate's chest at this simple sentiment, at the naturalness of Alexis's hug. This was what it was like to have a real family again, to be part of this family. It was something she'd been without for so many years now that she had grown accustomed to its absence and rarely allowed herself to even think about it, that way lay too much heartache and grief. But now, feeling all the affection that was so much a part of this home and this family enclosing her, surrounding her, she felt as if something inside her had burst open like a flower bud unfurling itself under the warmth of the sun.

Oh oh oh, _this_ was what she'd been missing. To have a long, tough day, a day of darkness and fear and violence, a day when she had needed to cram down all her own emotions and force herself to function only as Detective Beckett, and then, at the end, to be able to return, not to the rather spare, solitary comfort of her apartment, but to a _home_. A home where she was Kate, not Detective Beckett. She suddenly remembered the way Castle had described the loft when he had first offered to let her stay here after her apartment had exploded— _a secure building with an extra bedroom and people who care about you._

It was a sentiment she had resisted quite stubbornly during the weeks of her stay here last spring after her apartment had exploded but now, she freely acknowledged what had probably been true for months now, that the loft really was her home. Her apartment might be her space and where she lived about half the time but here, at the loft, was _home_. With Castle and at the loft was home.

Alexis drew back and then caught up Castle's bandaged hand. "Dad, what did you do to your hand?"

Castle grimaced, lightly tugging his hand out of hers and wrapping his arm around her. "It's nothing, pumpkin. I just scraped the skin off my knuckles, that's all," he lied, meeting Kate's eyes briefly as he did so. Kate nodded almost imperceptibly, silent promise that she wouldn't say anything to expose his prevarication. "I'll be as right as rain in a few days," he said reassuringly.

Alexis studied him as she sat down next to him on the couch and then turned her eyes to Kate. "Is this true, Kate? What did Dad do?"

"Don't you believe your own father?" Castle huffed in exaggerated offense but Alexis ignored him in favor of looking at Kate.

"He was protecting me, Alexis, so it's my fault," Kate answered, avoiding directly answering Alexis's question about the truth of Castle's injury since she didn't want to outright lie to the girl. She ignored the twist of her heart at the stark truth of the words. "An EMT looked at his hand at the scene and he'll be as good as new in a matter of days so it's nothing to worry about, I promise."

Castle opened his mouth, no doubt to protest Kate's taking the blame for his hand, but before he could, Martha spoke up from the armchair she'd settled into. "Nonsense, Katherine, what happened to Richard cannot be your fault unless you were the one who actually injured his hand."

"But what happened, Kate? This was still about that shooting yesterday at that coffee shop that I heard about on the news, wasn't it?" Alexis persisted.

Kate flicked a glance at Castle before answering carefully, "Yes, Alexis, it was." She hesitated, not quite sure how to answer Alexis's question truthfully enough but without frightening the girl. "The shooter from yesterday had kidnapped Ryan and Esposito—"

"Are they okay?" Alexis interrupted.

Kate managed a faint smile. Alexis, unlike the vast majority of teens, rarely interrupted but her concern over the boys overrode her manners. "Yes, they're fine. So tonight, your dad and I went in to rescue them and your dad… knocked out the shooter so we could take him into custody." It was, of course, a much simplified, even bowdlerized, version of the events of the evening but it was still as close to the truth as she felt comfortable admitting.

And this, too, was a new experience for her, having to think of ways to talk over things like this that happened at work.

She was used to being alone after things like this happened. After she had shot Dick Coonan or after any of the other situations where she'd been forced to use her gun and been faced with the danger that came with being a cop, she had always been alone, returned to her apartment to decompress and unwind, to the extent that she could, alone. She had always told herself she liked it that way, that it was easier to be alone than to have to put forward some false front of cheerfulness for another person or have to endure the fussing of people who had no real conception of what she'd been through. In a sense, she had been right; it was certainly simpler and, yes, easier in its way to be alone, with no one to give explanations to. But for all that, this was better.

To feel the inner chill that tended to set in once the rush of adrenaline wore off and then, instead of the rather cold comfort of her empty apartment, returning to a place of human warmth and affection—of people who cared about her and whom she cared about—and having all their concern and their love enfolding her like a warm blanket.

"So it's over then?"

"Yes, it's over," Kate answered Alexis, leaving unspoken her thought that it was only over for now. She had deliberately not mentioned her mother's case at all—she didn't want Alexis's youthful innocence to be tainted with knowledge of just how complicated the conspiracy surrounding her mother's death was and she was relatively confident, although she didn't know for certain, that Castle would not have mentioned anything about what had happened with Dick Coonan last year to either Alexis or Martha.

"It's over and I am just fine," Castle confirmed. "And really, pumpkin, it's my job to worry about you, not yours to worry about me."

"I worry about you because you're not good at staying out of trouble," Alexis told him pertly, adding with a flicker of an impish glance at Kate, "That's what Kate is for, isn't it?"

Kate couldn't help her soft laugh at Castle's pout. "You're cheeky tonight, daughter. But I'm still your parent. Which reminds me that it's late and you have school tomorrow so you should be going to bed."

Alexis made a little face but stood up obediently. "Yes, Dad, I was just about to go up but I wanted to see you and Kate since I hadn't heard from you all day." She bent and kissed Castle's cheek. "Night, Dad. Love you."

Castle wrapped his arm around her briefly. "I love you too, sweetie. Sleep well."

And then Kate was a little surprised as Alexis bent to give Kate a quick hug as well. "Night, Kate," she said as easily as if she always gave Kate a hug goodnight.

"Good night, Alexis," Kate murmured. She found herself remembering the way Alexis had said that she was family when Alexis had asked her to come to the dinner with Ashley's parents a couple months ago. _Family_ —and part of her wondered if she would ever get over the sweetness of the word, of having a real family again. It was a feeling that she and her dad had never managed to fully recapture; as much as her dad meant to her, as much as she and her dad had managed to repair their relationship, she was conscious that it wasn't the same. Would never be the same. Some corner of her was always, still, cautious when it came to her father, the old ease she had felt with him growing up, her confidence in her father's love, in his ability to be there for her, was gone forever.

It was one of the things she loved best about Castle's family, although it had also been rather painful to see at first, their undeniable ease with each other, the unmistakable strength of the bonds between Castle and Martha and Alexis. Castle grumbled and griped about Martha and Martha gave him a hard time in return and Alexis teased Castle often but for all that, it was easy to see that they were a family, secure in their love for each other. She suddenly found herself remembering the first time she had ever come to the loft, almost two years ago now, in the case involving the woman who had been frozen, Melanie Cavanaugh, and the way she'd found Castle playing laser-tag with Alexis and Martha with a beauty mask on her face. It had been her first real glimpse of just what a family they were.

And now, she was part of that family. Had played laser-tag with Castle and Alexis, had seen Martha wandering around the loft with a beauty mask on, even put on a beauty mask with Martha one lazy Saturday night while chatting with Alexis about the virtues of a cucumber mask for one's face (while Castle had grumbled with exaggerated disgruntlement about how the loft was beginning to resemble a beauty parlor).

And Alexis was hugging her goodnight the same way she hugged Castle.

"Good night, Grams."

"Good night, Alexis."

Kate watched as Alexis vanished up the stairs once her good nights were done, a faint smile playing on her lips and warmth lingering in her chest. She did love that girl.

"Is it really over or is that just what you said so Alexis wouldn't worry?"

Castle sighed. "Mother…"

Kate reached out to put her hand on his knee in silent reassurance. Captain Montgomery always said that for cops, it was never really over; there was always another case, another battle to fight. But Martha's question, the concern implicit in it, was a reminder that she had a life outside of the job. "It really is over, Martha. The shooter from yesterday and all his fellow conspirators are in custody now so this case is done. But there will be other cases but I promise I will do my best to keep him safe."

Martha studied her and then nodded. "Thank you, Katherine, but that goes for yourself too. Take care of yourself, just as much as you take care of him."

"Martha, I…" Her throat was tight with emotion, again, strangling whatever words she might say.

Martha lifted a hand to touch Kate's cheek and then her hair in one of those gestures that would probably have seemed affected in anyone else but which Kate had gradually become accustomed to. Kate still wasn't the most demonstrative person, not in the way that the entire Castle family was, but she had stopped being surprised by such casually affectionate gestures, had become more at ease with accepting them and even returning them to a degree.

Kate had to swallow the sudden lump of emotion in her throat, feeling actual tears pricking at the back of her eyes. Martha's touch reminded her so much of her mom. Her mom had had a way of cupping Kate's cheek with one hand when Kate had been young, usually followed by a gently teasing tug on a lock of Kate's hair to make Kate smile. The teenage Katie had rebelled against those little caresses and it was one of the things Kate regretted the most. She thought, not for the first time, that she would give everything she had to have her mom cup her cheek again.

She felt Castle cover her hand on his knee with his. "That's enough, Mother," he said, his voice gentle. "I know you're worried but we're both just fine and you know as well as anyone that there's no way to eliminate all risks from life. And now, it's late and we've had a long day."

"Of course, darling. Go get some rest." Martha stood up and bent to kiss Castle's cheek and then kissed Kate's as well. "Good night, Katherine."

Kate returned the sentiment in a murmur and waited until Martha, too, had vanished up the stairs before she stood up and tugged Castle to his feet, lifting up his injured hand to study it.

"How is your hand feeling? You think you need a painkiller?"

He shook his head just once, a quick jerk. "I'm fine."

He was lying, or at the very least, playing down his own discomfort. She could see it in the faint lines of strain around his eyes, in the dullness of his eyes. "Take a painkiller anyway." She released his hand and gave him a nudge in the direction of the kitchen where she knew Advil and Tylenol were kept. (Castle had made a point of pointing out that particular cabinet in the kitchen the first night she'd been staying at the loft after her apartment had exploded, proceeding to distract her from her discomfiture at his thoughtfulness and the reminder that he had seen her naked by making her laugh at stories of Martha stumbling down the stairs in the morning and needing the pills for a morning hangover.)

"You're very bossy," he pretended to complain but his voice was teasing and he did, after all, do what she'd said.

"I thought you liked that about me," she returned lightly.

He turned to shoot her a leer, although for once, it seemed to take some effort. "Oh, believe me, I do. Your bossiness is very hot."

She couldn't quite help but laugh. "I'll remind you of that the next time you complain about my telling you what to do."

He abruptly sobered. "As long as you're still around to tell me what to do."

Her chest was abruptly flooded with warmth, her heart seeming to expand with so much emotion she momentarily wondered if her chest could contain it all. She didn't know how she had ever gotten so lucky as to have this dear, loving man look at her so, as if she was as necessary to his life and happiness as the air he breathed, but somehow, miraculously he was.

Her mind had blanked of any words so after a moment, she only managed to say, "Come to bed, Castle."

And the way his expression suffused with so much happiness mingled in with lust made her feel as if her words hadn't been so inadequate after all.

She took his hand in hers as soon as he was close enough and led him through his office and into his bedroom, closing the door behind them and enclosing them into this space that was only theirs.

She slipped off her father's watch and then the necklace with her mother's ring on it, placing them both on the silver jewelry tray, which Castle had wordlessly placed on the nightstand on her side of the bed.

(It was characteristic of him, she had learned, to make these small gestures without mentioning them, small little ways he showed her not just the attention he paid to her but also his wish to welcome her into his bedroom and his life. For other, bigger things, he could be overdramatic and make a big deal of them, but it was also the little things he did too. They had barely been together for a week before she had realized that at some point, he had quietly gone out and bought her preferred brand of shampoo and body soap and added them to the shower in his en suite. And he had equally quietly placed an extra towel and toothbrush in the en suite, to say nothing of the discovery she had made within a month of her moving into her own apartment when she had opened up one of the drawers of his dresser when hunting for one of his t-shirts to wear and found that he had already cleared the drawer for her, leaving it almost entirely empty except for a few of his old t-shirts.)

She turned away to see that he was awkwardly struggling to unbutton his shirt with only his left hand, his right hand rendered clumsy and useless because of the bandage. She went over to him and took over.

He tried to brush her hands aside. "I can manage."

One of her hands gripped his shirt, refusing to be brushed aside. "Rick." As always, the use of his first name got his attention and he looked up to meet her eyes. Her eyes and her voice softened. "Let me."

He acquiesced, his hands falling to his sides, letting her unbutton his shirt in uncharacteristic passivity and silence.

She remembered to undo the buttons at his cuffs before she pushed his shirt off his shoulders, baring his chest to her appreciative gaze. She hadn't—honestly, she hadn't—been thinking in sensual terms when she'd started to unbutton his shirt, had been more concerned with sparing him any discomfort but at the sight of his chest, the muscles of his pectorals, lust abruptly mingled in with the tenderness in her chest.

Mmm. He was so… yummy (what, her brain wasn't fully functioning right now) and he was hers.

And sensual intent was definitely present as she let her fingers trace the muscles of his chest, feeling the reaction jolt through him.

"Beckett, you—" he broke off on a groan as she slid her hands down his chest and his stomach to flick open the fastenings of his pants.

She glanced up at him, her hands pausing. "Let me love you," she husked.

"Yes. God, yes," he rasped immediately.

And so she did.

She stripped him of the rest of his clothes and then once he was naked, directed him to lie down before she proceeded to strip herself, deliberately slowing down just a little as she did so, dragging out the reveal of every additional inch of skin.

But even so, it wasn't long before she was joining him on the bed and setting out to do just what she'd said, loving him, making love to him, as he lay back and let her have her way in a way that didn't usually happen in the bedroom.

She was never passive but at the same time, after spending all her days at work making decisions and always needing to be the strong, in-control Detective Beckett, in the evenings, in the privacy of their bedroom, she liked being able to lay down her burdens, liked that she didn't need to be strong or in control. Liked that she could let him take over, trusted him enough to follow his lead.

But tonight, she wanted to do everything for him. Wanted to tell him with her hands and her lips and her body how much she appreciated his strength, the way he'd had her back, the way he had saved her, even the way he had injured himself on her behalf. She didn't have the words but she could show him.

She knew the places to touch him to make him tremble and to groan, knew the way he would look at her, his eyes burning with so much want it sent a fresh wash of heat through her.

She knew the way to caress him with her hands and then with her lips to make him moan, his body jerking and straining beneath her, his uninjured hand fisting in the sheets.

And every kiss, every caress, every touch, was vulnerability and strength, regret and gratitude, worry and celebration, so familiar and so poignantly precious as well.

And then she finally rose up over him and sank down again, taking him inside her. And oh, she knew that too, knew the feeling of him inside her, filling her, until there were times she could swear he was touching her heart.

She bent and kissed him, softly now. "Rick."

"Kate."

Just their names and then there were no more words, no more need for words, there was only them, together, their bodies easily finding a rhythm, and she knew how good they were together.

Oh yes, she knew him, knew his body and his heart.

And when she hit her peak, she knew the burst of pleasure that only he could give her, the pleasure that stole her breath and her heart and her very soul. And when he, too, reached his climax, she knew the way he cried out her name in that guttural tone, knew that she was, in that moment, the only thing in his world.

Afterwards, she slumped over him, her body half draped over his, and felt the last lingering remnants of the tension that had gripped her since the moment she had heard Raglan's voice on the phone the day before dissolve.

One of his arms lay heavily across her back, keeping her snugly against him if she'd had any inclination (or ability, for that matter) to move away. She felt his fingertips lightly tracing idle patterns over her bare shoulder and gradually, her head cleared enough to become cognizant of the fact that the movement of his fingertips was not quite as fluid even in these tiny caresses, that the faintly abrasive sensation against her skin was from the gauze of the bandage on his hand.

She turned her head just a little to kiss his ear lobe. "I hate that you were hurt because of me," she murmured.

"You think I care at all about my hand after what you just did to me?"

She choked on a half-laugh. "Castle!"

"What? It's true. I'm surprised I even remember I have a hand at all."

"It's not funny, Castle."

"Hey." He nudged her chin with his uninjured hand until she lifted her head just enough to meet his eyes. "My hand will be as good as new in a matter of days and besides that, my mother was right—but don't tell her I said so—it isn't your fault that I'm hurt, okay? I'm fine, we're both fine, and we'll do everything we can to stay that way. So stop thinking so much."

He made it sound so simple. But looking at him, at his eyes, blue and clear and blessedly free from any shadows from pain or worry, she couldn't find it in herself to disagree or do anything that might disturb his peace of mind.

And after all, he was right too because Lockwood was in custody and they had both come through relatively unscathed.

"Okay," she agreed softly and settled her head against his shoulder again and letting her eyes close.

He shifted beneath her, using his foot to pull up the sheets and comforter that had been pushed to the bottom of the bed, and she reached out with a hand to haul them up the rest of the way. That done, she shifted, rearranging herself into a more comfortable position although she remained fully nestled against him, because his arm was still keeping her imprisoned against him. Which was fine with her since being snugly tucked into the safe haven of his body was where she wanted to be anyway.

"Stop wiggling, Beckett, and sleep," he mumbled, drowsiness slurring his words.

"Mm. Night, Castle." She felt her own exhaustion crashing down on her. "Love you," she mumbled.

There was no answer. She listened to the reassuring steadiness of his deep, even breaths, and in a matter of seconds, followed him into sleep.

* * *

Castle stirred, tugged half out of sleep when he felt Beckett slide out from under his arm, leaving the bed. He cracked open one bleary eye to see her padding quickly into the bathroom and then, reassured, shut his eye and prepared to drift back into sleep.

The sound of a drawer opening pulled him towards awareness again and he blinked open his eyes to see Beckett rummaging around in the drawer of his dresser which was now hers.

"Beckett," he rasped, his voice rough with lingering drowsiness, "did a body drop?"

She turned back to him but even as he asked the question, his brain awoke even further to realize that it couldn't be a body as her phone hadn't rung. He turned his head to squint at the alarm clock to see that it wasn't 6 a.m. yet. Ugh. He turned back to look at her.

She put panties and her bra on before perching on the side of the bed. "I'm going to the prison to talk to Hal Lockwood."

The name effectively cleared the last vestiges of sleep from his mind and he pushed himself up onto his elbow. "What? Why?"

Beckett had heard from Montgomery yesterday that Lockwood had been transferred to the prison from holding, where he'd been confined after he'd been treated for his injuries, the paperwork for his imprisonment having finally gone through. Castle had hoped that would be the last time he ever needed to hear that name again, but apparently that wasn't to be.

"You know why, Castle. He knows who's behind my mother's murder so I have to talk to him."

"Now?"

Her jaw firmed, her tone becoming the steely Beckett one that indicated that her mind was made up with all the force of will and determination that was a part of her. "I plan to go to the prison every day and stare him down until he cracks and tells me more about who ordered my mother's murder."

He didn't doubt that Beckett was fully capable of doing just that, of driving out to the prison every day to stare down the devil. A chill settled in his chest and Jim Beckett's words from a couple days ago returned to him, his request to keep Beckett from losing herself to her mother's case again. Oh god.

"Beckett." He cleared his throat and sat up fully, trying to decide how to approach this. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

She frowned. "Of course I'm sure."

He tried again, revising his strategy. "Beckett, think about what Lockwood is. We saw him. He's a trained professional, not just some run-of-the-mill thug who can be intimidated. A staring contest isn't going to make him crack and spill his guts."

A flicker of an expression he couldn't quite read in the dimness of his bedroom crossed her face. "Maybe you're right but what else can I do, Castle? Some man ordered my mother's murder and Lockwood is my connection to him. He's the best chance I have to find out who he is."

Lockwood was the only connection Beckett had since she'd been forced to kill Dick Coonan, Castle's mind reflexively supplied, and he suppressed a wince, the old, familiar guilt returning to him.

He reached out with his uninjured hand and tugged Beckett closer to him, feeling somewhat comforted as she came willingly, sliding across the bed to curl up next to him, tucking herself into the circle of his arm. He turned to press his lips against her forehead.

She let out a soft sound of distress. "I just… I want the truth. I need to know the truth and even though we've learned so much, it seems like I'm still just as far away as ever from finding out who really killed my mother."

He hadn't realized it was possible for something to be both painful and yet somehow comforting at the same time. The hurt in her voice lacerated his heart even as her words filled him with an odd warmth as he was momentarily amazed by her all over again. To have Beckett talking to him like this about her worries, letting him see her vulnerability. He thought again about what Beckett had said about him the other day in the coffee shop when Raglan had challenged his presence, that he was someone she trusted. She _trusted_ him and with Kate Beckett, that somehow went even deeper, meant more in some ways, than her loving him.

He tightened his arm around her. "You don't know that, Kate. In a mystery, it's never really possible to know how close or how far we are from solving it until after the fact. We have learned more, a lot more, and we won't give up but Kate, we'll do it the smart way, the safe way."

An odd role reversal that had him preaching caution to Beckett but Johanna Beckett's case was probably the single thing where Beckett's characteristic carefulness was overridden, superseded by her driving urge to find out the truth about her mother's murder. When it came to her mother's case, she was too blinded by the sheer strength of her emotions.

"And I won't let you go down the rabbit hole again," he added.

She turned towards him, sliding her arm around him. "Don't let me lose myself, Castle," she whispered into his shoulder.

"I won't," he promised her, making a silent vow to himself at the same time. He couldn't lose her to her mother's case, couldn't lose her, period, and he knew what her mother's case did to her, had done to her in the past.

She didn't say anything and after a moment, he went on, quietly, "If you have to visit Lockwood so you can look him in the eye, you can, but not every day, Kate. Go once every couple weeks, once a month even. That will keep you in the mind of the prison staff so if anything changes with him, you'll hear about it." He fully expected Beckett would go to the prison. It wasn't in her to avoid a confrontation with a killer and certainly not with one associated with her mother's case. She would need to go and look Lockwood in the eye, even just once, because she would need to know she had.

She nodded, just once, against his shoulder, and then said after a moment, "Not today. I don't think I should see him today when it's still so fresh in my mind, but maybe in another couple days." She paused. "Come with me?"

"Yes," he agreed, the single word all he could trust himself to say past the lump of emotion in this throat. To have his independent Beckett asking him to come with her, trusting him to keep her from going back down the rabbit hole of her mother's case…

She brushed her lips against his clavicle. "I think… I need to not think about my mother's case anymore," she mumbled. "Will you distract me?"

There was the faintest thread of teasing seduction in her voice and he felt his body react to it, even as his heart lifted, and he had to fight to keep his voice neutral. "I could tell you a story… or we could watch a movie…"

She huffed a soft laugh against his skin and poked him in the side.

He made a show of yelping and grabbing her offending hand as much as he could manage with the bandage still wrapped around his injured hand. "Hey! Be nice, Beckett."

"You be nice."

"I am," he said with mock indignation. "I'm trying to think of ways to distract you."

"Try again."

He took her at her word, promptly turning over and taking her with him until she was pinned to the bed beneath him. "Distracted yet, Beckett?"

She smirked and then deliberately shifted her hips beneath his insinuatingly so the cove of her body was neatly cradling the part of his body that was quite thoroughly… distracted and getting more so by the second. "Not yet," she husked, the tone of her voice entirely belying her words.

"Well then, I guess I'll just have to try… harder…" he lowered his head until his lips were hovering barely an inch above hers, loving the way her lips automatically parted on a soft pant of anticipation, "to distract you, won't I?" he murmured—and closed the gap between their lips.

And proceeded to ensure that he was the only thing on her mind, when she was capable of thought at all, which wasn't for long.

 _~To be continued…~_

A/N 2: And that's it for "Knockdown." It is one of my all-time favorite episodes so I can only hope I did it some measure of justice but I will leave that to you to determine. Thank you all for reading.


	17. Chapter 16: Lucky Stiff

Author's Note: This chapter is based on "Lucky Stiff." Some familiar dialogue ahead. Enjoy!

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 16_

"So what's going to happen to all that money?" Castle asked as they headed back into the bullpen after talking to Mrs. Hixton and Nicole and telling them why Shawn York had killed Jay Hixton.

"That's for the lawyers to decide," Kate said rather indifferently. She didn't care much about the money. As generous as Hixton had been with it, it certainly didn't seem to have brought him any good. "The good news is that Nicole is going back into rehab and her mom is going to be there for her when she gets out."

"Well, at least something good will come of all this," Castle commented.

"Yeah," she agreed, idly flipping through some new files that had been placed in the Inbox on her desk. It was a small comfort but she couldn't help but appreciate Castle's ability to point out and relish even these small victories when it was so easy for her to get bogged down in the seemingly never-ending darkness of her job at times.

She grimaced to herself at the thought. Oz would be going away for a number of years since they had him dead to rights on possession with intent to distribute but a conviction for first-degree murder would have ensured that, in all likelihood, Oz would have never seen the light of day as a free man again. As it was, Kate was depressingly certain that Oz would probably be paroled out within the next decade, perhaps even in the next 5 years, leaving him plenty of time to go right back to dealing drugs.

Kate, like most cops who'd spent any time in Narcotics, detested drug dealers like Oz; run-of-the-mill killers, gang members practically seemed like saints in comparison to drug dealers who deliberately preyed on people's weaknesses and ruined so many lives at once in an insidious, poisonous way. And Oz was in a class of his own, even worse than the less clever, random lowlife drug dealers, deliberately seeking out a young girl like Nicole after she had managed to fight her addiction once. After the years of witnessing her father's struggles, Kate couldn't stay detached when it came to addiction of any kind and she certainly could not ever forgive those who encouraged and fed on other people's addictions.

She still remembered the time a friend of her dad's had invited her dad to a Fourth of July picnic in a well-meaning, kind gesture but who had then thoughtlessly let his sense of hospitality encourage her dad into having a couple social beers along with everyone else. At the time, her dad had managed to stay sober for almost three weeks, the longest he had ever managed to stay sober, and Kate had just started to begin to believe that this time her dad really would succeed—and then she'd received a drunken phone call from her dad that night after he had returned home to his solitary apartment once the barbecue was over and, having gotten the taste of alcohol back, had drunk more once he'd been alone.

Kate still remembered the crushing disillusionment and fury she'd felt. It had taken months of counseling before Kate had accepted that her dad's friend wasn't entirely to blame for it, that her dad's friend had honestly not understood the nature of Jim's struggles, with that naiveté that only those who'd never been exposed to addictions of any kind could really possess. It had been thoughtlessness rather than active malevolence, but either way, Kate had struggled with her fury at her dad's friend. (It had been easier, less painful, to rage at her dad's friend and shift all the blame to him for Jim's relapse rather than accepting the harsh truth that it was, still, her dad's responsibility, her dad's weakness.)

And after that, Kate hadn't allowed herself to really believe in her dad's sobriety until he had neared the two year mark, had been tense and almost constantly waiting and dreading that phone call from him or someone else to indicate that he had relapsed. And even to this day, some tiny part of her still didn't have complete confidence in his continued sobriety. She shoved the memory out of her mind. It was over. Her dad was sober now—he _was_ and he would _stay_ sober—and she'd forgiven him and they had rebuilt their relationship.

Still, Kate vindictively wanted Oz to be locked up for good; if she could have, she would have brought back the death penalty just for drug dealers like him.

But then, Kate reminded herself it was a good thing in one sense that Oz had not ended up being the killer because if Oz had been, Nicole would never have been able to forgive herself, would have blamed herself for the rest of her life for getting her father killed, which wasn't a burden Kate would wish on anyone, let alone a girl as young as Nicole was.

"I am beat," Castle announced in the overly dramatic manner he adopted at times (definitely Martha Rodgers's son), dropping heavily down into his chair. "How much longer will it be before you can leave?"

Kate smiled faintly, her heart warming at the unspoken implication that Castle would be sticking around for her to finish up her paperwork. He always did these days, unless something came up with Alexis or Martha, or when he got one of his writing itches and she sent him home so he could write it out. She had never been one to knock off work promptly at the end of her shift and she still wasn't but having Castle in her life, having Castle to go home with, made a huge difference in her willingness to leave work closer to the normal end of her shift rather than sticking around until all hours. And she'd realized too that it was good for her to have a life outside of work, not only because it made her happier, but because it also made her job easier, cleared her head in a way so she could work more efficiently when she was at work. Working insanely long, unnecessary hours out of sheer stubbornness and a reluctance to go home to her always-before barren apartment had not been conducive to her efficiency or her energy.

"Not too long. I just need to finish up the paperwork processing Shawn York's arrest. Writing up the case report can wait until tomorrow. But you don't need to stay, you know. Go home if you're tired."

"Nah. Besides," he added with a teasing grin, "whenever I go back to the loft alone, all my mother ever does is ask where you are and why you didn't come home with me." He affected a pout. "I'm beginning to think my mother likes you more than me."

Kate laughed. "Dear Martha."

"I notice you're not disagreeing with me that my mother likes you better," he pretended to grumble.

"What can I say? I'm very likable," she quipped.

"I'm likable!" he protested with exaggerated affront. "Everyone likes me. My fans like me, my many followers on Twitter like me, my ex-wives like me, Espo and Ryan like me, Alexis likes me. Even you like me."

She sternly bit back a smile. "Even I like you, huh? You so sure about that? I could just be keeping you around for the coffee."

He glanced quickly around at the rapidly emptying bullpen before leaning in to say, huskily, "That wasn't what you said last night."

She felt hot color flood her face at the memory of last night, of what Castle had done to her the moment they'd returned to the loft after interrogating Oz at the precinct. She might have changed out of the dress she'd worn to the club but she'd known perfectly well that Castle hadn't forgotten in the slightest the way she'd looked in the dress. It had been written all over his face whenever he'd looked at her. He'd kept his hands to himself while she'd been driving the Ferrari back to the loft but he had immediately flattened her against the wall of the elevator the moment they were inside it and then had pinned her up against the door of his bedroom. They hadn't made it to the bed the first time. The second time last night, he'd laid her out flat on his bed and tortured her with his evil, talented hands and lips and tongue until she'd had to stifle her scream in the pillow.

"Castle!" she hissed.

He sat back in his chair with an infuriatingly self-satisfied smirk on his face that made her want to shoot him. Or kiss him. Or shoot him and then kiss him or maybe the other way around. Smug, irritating man.

He didn't say anything more, apparently deciding that discretion was the better part of valor. Or sensing that continuing on in this smug vein would prove hazardous to his health.

Kate shot him a narrow-eyed look before turning back to the paperwork on Shawn York's arrest, sternly pushing out of her mind any thoughts not related to work and the case. She was a cop and she still had a job to do before the Hixton case could be officially closed.

It was about half an hour before she was done with the paperwork needed to make Shawn York's arrest official so he could be transferred to Central Booking tomorrow. "Done for the day, Castle."

"Finally," he declared dramatically.

She suppressed a smile, rolling her eyes a little. "It didn't take that long. And you didn't need to wait."

He gave her a look of exaggerated horror. "You would send me out into the dangerous streets of Manhattan unprotected? Beckett, I thought cops were supposed to protect people."

She laughed, elbowing him as they walked. "You are such a child, Castle."

"Am not."

She bit her lip to keep from smiling. "I rest my case."

"Not a child," he huffed in a deliberately childish whine. "I'm a grown man."

"You're a silly, childish man," she amended for him.

He widened his eyes and gave her one of his best cute puppy-dog looks. Made all the more effective because of the way the bright blue of his shirt today echoed the color of his eyes, made them seem impossibly blue. She tried very hard—and failed—not to react to the look, not to have her expression, to say nothing of her heart, softening at the sight. Drat him. He knew what that look did to her. "Hey, I can't help it if I'm adorable."

"What you are is very vain," she said, trying to sound tart and not quite succeeding.

He gave a huff of mock offense and managed to preserve his best attempt at an affronted silence for the next few minutes until they were in her car.

She couldn't help the smile playing around her lips as she drove. Okay, so he was adorable—not that she had any intention of admitting that to him.

"Finding a cure for cancer," he abruptly blurted out.

She blinked and turned to stare at him. "What?"

"I'm trying to figure out what you would do with your hypothetical lottery winnings. I've already realized that you wouldn't do something frivolous like buy a deserted island somewhere. I always liked the idea of buying an island," he added irrelevantly. "I even looked into it years ago but then I realized that it made no sense because of my fear of tsunamis and the open ocean."

"And finding a cure for cancer is your newest idea for my nonexistent jackpot dreams?" She had to hand it to him. He was persistent. She'd known that already but even so, she was a little surprised that he was still continuing to harp on what she would do in the nonexistent chance that she won the lottery one day. He hadn't mentioned it all day since the morning when they'd gone to talk to Easley so she'd begun to think he'd forgotten about it or just given up. She should have known better.

"Yes. It seems like the sort of non-frivolous thing you would do. So, am I right?"

"As nice as the idea is, I really don't see why you care so much about a financial decision I will never have to make."

"Oh come on, Beckett. Even if they never really expect to win the lottery, everyone thinks about it in idle moments, what they'd do if they had all the money they wanted and could do anything. So come on, tell me."

"I don't even buy lottery tickets so I really have never thought about what I'd do if I won."

"Well, it doesn't have to be the lottery, then. It could just be that staple of Victorian English literature, the mysterious benefactor or the long-lost relative bequeathing you a fortune. What would you do if you inherited a lot of money unexpectedly?"

Her amusement abruptly died. She didn't have to wonder. She'd inherited, if not a fortune (certainly not by Castle's standards), but still quite a lot of money when her mom had died. She fought back the sudden wave of emotion, sternly schooling her voice into indifference.

"I'm not Pip in _Great Expectations_ , Castle."

"I think you're more like Jane Eyre. Another strong-willed, determined woman trying to make her way in the world."

Kate inwardly flinched again. Jane Eyre had never had parental figures to rely on, had been abandoned and left alone to make her way in the world. She told herself she was being overly sensitive—she knew she was—but she couldn't quite seem to help it. She was tired, the twist of Nicole's addiction in the case had brought back some bad memories, and now Castle was persisting in his blithe, unfeeling curiosity. She'd been able to laugh when it was about the lottery but an unexpected inheritance wasn't something she could laugh over, even if she knew Castle didn't mean anything by it. He didn't know anything about the money she'd inherited from her mom; she'd never mentioned it to him and they had never really spoken about money matters.

"Come on, Beckett, tell me, what would you do with a sudden windfall?"

"I really haven't thought about it," she clipped out.

"I don't believe that, Beckett. Everyone thinks about it. Espo and a Ferrari, Ryan and a winery, Captain Montgomery and his fishing boat. And you know I'm going to keep on bugging you until you tell me so you might as well give in now," he joked.

They had—finally and thankfully—arrived back at the loft and Kate threw her car into park with entirely unnecessary force.

"Just stop it, Castle!" she snapped, her annoyance and her emotional upset abruptly erupting. "I know what it's like to inherit money unexpectedly and the money didn't do a damn thing for me. All the money in the world wouldn't bring my mom back and money didn't keep me from losing my dad to the bottle for years and even now, the truth about my mother's murder isn't something I can buy so you tell me, why I should care about money so much."

Kate flung open her car door, suddenly needing to move and be out of sight of Castle's stricken face, slamming her car door behind her in an immature expression of frustration she would be ashamed about later.

"Kate!"

She didn't manage to make it two steps from her car before Castle caught up to her, tugging her stiff body into his arms.

She didn't fight to get free but stayed unyielding, unresponsive, as she tried to tamp down her annoyance.

He kept his arms wrapped around her as if he hadn't even noticed her stiffness (although she knew he would), one hand lightly caressing her hair. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to upset you. I didn't mean to make it seem like money was the most important thing or that it could get you everything you want."

He had nothing to be sorry for, she thought, and that was what made her body soften, curving into his embrace. He had only been continuing on in his teasing curiosity; he hadn't known anything about the money she'd received from her mom to realize the mention of an inheritance would upset her. In spite of the times Castle irritated her, she knew he would never deliberately hurt her, usually treaded carefully around the subject of her mom.

"No, I'm the one who's sorry, Castle," she murmured against his shoulder. "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. I was just… upset and I took it out on you and I'm sorry."

"Your mom left you some money?" he asked, his voice ineffably gentle.

Not for the first time, she marveled at Castle's putting up with her when she knew she could be irritable and snap at him unfairly, as she had just now, but he was so good to her. She thought it might be a byproduct of his being a parent, even a parent of a child as good as Alexis was, that he'd developed a thick enough skin and enough patience not to lose his temper easily but whatever the reason, she had to admit that he had far more forbearance for her bad temper than she would in his shoes. She really didn't deserve him.

She nodded against his shoulder, using the moment to swallow back the lump of emotion in her throat. "My grandfather, the amateur magician I told you about, passed away my senior year of high school and he left almost everything to my mom and some to me. And then when my mom… I got what my mom inherited from my grandfather and other funds my mom had saved." She broke off in some embarrassment at the way her voice trembled. She let out a shaky breath, momentarily burying her face in the space where his neck met his shoulder, her nose nudging aside the collar of his shirt. She breathed in the smell of his cologne mingled in with sweat from the day and the scent that was uniquely him and let the familiarity of it soothe her, smooth away the rough edges of her emotions.

She had hated the money when she'd first received it, had gone so far as to tear up the first paper statement she'd received from the bank confirming that the funds had been transferred into her name in a fit of impotent anger and grief. And then she'd sat and cried over the shredded pieces of paper. She'd felt as if the entire world was mocking her in some way, as if the money was supposed to make up for the loss of her family, for her mother's being dead and her dad's being so lost in the bottle that he was no longer really there either.

He didn't say anything, only went on holding her, one hand lightly stroking her hair.

And after a moment, she managed to continue. "I… it took me years to really accept having the money. I didn't… I didn't use it until after the Academy and then it was only to help pay for rent so I could live closer to work." Living close to work had given her more time to spend down in Archives poring over her mother's case; at the time, that had been the strongest reason to overcome her visceral reluctance to use the money.

She still only used the money she'd inherited for rent; everything else—her clothes, food, other living expenses she paid with her salary. She'd learned the tricks of where to buy her clothes and shoes at highly discounted prices, hadn't travelled anywhere for vacation since college (not that she'd taken much vacation at all, generally only going when Montgomery literally forced her to use her allotment of vacation days—until last summer for the Fourth of July with Castle.)

"I didn't mean to be insensitive," he finally murmured.

"You didn't know, Castle," she returned equally quietly.

"I should have guessed."

He was so quick to accept blame, she thought, suddenly remembering the way he'd blamed himself for being taken hostage by Dick Coonan.

"I never told you and," she added, lifting her head so she could look at him, "this may come as a shock to you, Castle, but I don't expect you to be omniscient."

As she'd hoped and expected, that kindled a spark of humor in his eyes even as he pulled a face of mock dismay. "I think I'm hurt. You don't think I know everything?"

She smirked at him and finally drew back out of his arms. "Get over it, Castle."

Predictably, he didn't. "But I'm brilliant," he declared with exaggerated pomposity. "How can you not think I know everything?"

She nudged him in the side but laughed almost in spite of herself as they walked into the building, lifting a hand to wave in greeting to Eduardo, the doorman on duty today. He just made her laugh—and sometimes she thought that his ability to make her laugh might be what she loved best about him. As silly as he could be, as vain as he occasionally sounded, she knew he wasn't really serious about it, his displays of ego joking rather than not.

She shook her head in mock irritation. "I don't know how I put up with you and your enormous ego."

"It's not ego," he pretended to huff. "It's the truth."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, Castle, let's see what Alexis and Martha have to say about that."

"That's not fair; they're biased, Alexis for me and my mother against me."

"I always knew Martha's a very smart woman," Kate quipped.

"Hey!"

Kate was still laughing as she opened the door to the loft to see Alexis and Martha seated together, poring over some papers.

Martha looked up and waved. "Oh good, Katherine, I was hoping you'd come over tonight."

Castle made a face for Kate's benefit. "Good evening to you too, Mother," he said loudly.

Martha barely spared Castle a glance. "There's no need to shout, Richard. My hearing is perfectly fine."

Kate smirked at Castle's beleaguered expression and then touched Alexis's shoulder in greeting. "Hey, Alexis."

Alexis gave her a sunny smile. "Hi, Kate."

"Katherine, I decided to take your advice and use the money to honor Chet's legacy."

"By buying property?" Castle asked hopefully.

"I think it's perfect," Alexis chimed in.

"Oh, what have you decided, Martha?"

"I'm going to open the Martha Rodgers School of Acting," she announced with trademark flair.

"That sounds—" Kate began, intending to say that it sounded like a great idea.

"I thought you were going to do something to honor Chet," Castle interrupted.

Alexis swatted lightly at Castle.

"Well, I am," Martha declared. "Oh, Chet was always encouraging me to use my enormous talent to help people."

"Then shouldn't you call it the Chet Palaburn School of Acting, given its auspices?" Castle queried.

It was Kate's turn to nudge him.

"Well, it's customary that when you're opening a school, you use a great teacher's name. Like Strasberg, Meisner, Adler…"

"And now Rodgers," Kate chimed in, smiling at Martha. "I think it sounds like a wonderful idea." She did. She had never actually seen Martha perform on stage but if ever a woman appeared to live and breathe theatricality and performance, it was Martha Rodgers. She could be over-the-top—and undoubtedly was, as Castle would say—but she was warm-hearted and generous and had such a genuine love of the theatre that Kate could imagine she would be a very good teacher. Not that Kate knew anything about acting but she knew enough about teaching to know that a love of the subject was generally the first prerequisite.

"Thank you, Katherine. I'm going to commission a portrait to be done of Chet that will hang in the lobby so his legacy will last forever."

"That's a nice thought. I like it, Mother," Castle said approvingly.

Martha beamed at him. "Thank you, darling."

"Plus it'll get you out of the house more so that's a plus for me," he added.

Kate's "Castle!" overlapped with Alexis's reproachful "Dad!" as Kate elbowed him. "Be nice, Castle."

Martha pretended to scowl at her son. "I'm sure I raised you to have better manners than that, Richard."

"It must have slipped my mind in between all the lessons on how to treat morning-after hangovers," Castle parried immediately.

"Don't listen to him," Martha addressed Kate and Alexis. "He's exaggerating."

Kate laughed while Alexis smirked at her father. "Don't worry, Gram. I never listen to Dad anyway."

Castle mimed being struck in the chest. "You wound me, oh ungrateful daughter of mine."

Alexis grinned at him while Kate gave him a deliberately condescending pat on the head. "That's okay, Castle. I'm sure you deserve every bit of it."

He huffed. "Have I mentioned that it's really unfair when you all gang up on me?"

"If you can't say anything nice, go away, Dad, and leave us alone to decide where Gram's new school should be."

Martha waved a hand in a shooing gesture. "Yes, feel free to go, Richard. We'll call you if we need you."

"You mean you'll call me if you need more money," he pretended to grouse.

Martha widened her eyes in theatrical, overblown surprise. "Why, of course, Richard, why else would we need you?"

Castle made a show of pouting and Kate's heart softened inside her and she stopped him to brush a quick kiss to his cheek. "Go write, Castle. You said you were behind on the latest Nikki Heat book anyway."

Castle vanished into his office while Kate turned back to Martha and Alexis. "How much space were you thinking you'll need for your school?" she asked, sitting down beside Alexis and beginning to look through some of the print-outs of properties.

Martha answered, thinking aloud, and the three of them settled into an easy, mostly light-hearted discussion about the pros and cons attached to various of the properties, not reaching any decisions but having a lot of fun in planning anyway.

* * *

A little while later, Kate slipped into Castle's office to see him leaning back in his chair. His laptop was open in front of him but he wasn't actually writing, was instead gazing absently at the bookshelves across from the desk.

He blinked and straightened up as she entered. "So did my mother settle on a piece of property to buy?"

"No, we were just talking over what she thought she'd need. There's a lot to consider in setting up an acting school studio."

"And I'm sure my mother will make sure to inform me of every one of them," he added with mock apprehension.

She laughed softly, moving up behind him to lean over the back of his chair, resting her hands on his shoulders, and dropping a kiss on the top of his hair.

He turned his chair, capturing her wrist in one hand so he could tug her down into his lap. She went willingly, one arm looping around his neck, as she settled comfortably against him.

"Did my mother and Alexis go upstairs?"

She nodded. "Mm hmm. Alexis said she was expecting a call from Ashley and Martha said she wanted to try calling one of her old theatre friends for advice."

He made a face. "Alexis's nightly phone calls with Ashley are positively epic in length and I swear she's starting to rearrange her entire schedule around them. She's cut off conversations with me in the middle because she's gotten a call from him. And honestly, I don't see what they have to talk about. They see each other every day at school and usually spend a couple hours after school hanging out but still, every night, they're on the phone for hours on end, even though they'd seen each other just a few hours earlier. You'd really think they'd run out of things to talk about."

She laughed softly. "Alexis might say the same thing about us, you realize. After all, we spend most of the day together at the precinct and then most of our evenings together after that."

"That's different," he said immediately.

"Why, because it's us?"

"No, because at the precinct, we have actual work to do. It's not like we spend the entire day talking."

She quirked her eyebrows at him. " _We_ do actual work, huh? Funny how this shared work of ours never involves you doing any of the paperwork."

"Don't blame me for that; blame NYPD policy for not allowing civilians to submit the official paperwork."

"Oh of course, that's the only reason you never do any paperwork," she said sarcastically. "Riight."

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it," he quipped.

She grinned. "Yeah, I just bet you are. Nice excuse."

"Anyway, I still don't really see what Alexis and Ashley have to talk about all the time."

"Well, Ashley's just finished up his college applications so I imagine they talk about college and future plans a lot."

"They're too young to be making future plans together," he grumbled.

"I don't think that's how they see it, Castle. Anyway, you're always saying Alexis is mature for her age and she acts more like a grown-up than, oh, a certain writer I can think of," she teased.

"Yes, that's true," he said with exaggerated solemnity. "Connelly is very immature sometimes."

She laughed. "I'm telling him you said that at your next poker night."

"Who said you're invited to the next poker night, Beckett?"

"Special privilege of being a muse," she quipped. "Ask any of the writers."

"Not fair; they like having you around because you can actually beat me at poker sometimes."

"Only sometimes?"

"Hey! I've won against you and the boys lots of times."

"I go easy on you when the boys are around."

He snorted. "You do not. You're temperamentally incapable of not competing to the best of your ability."

He had a point but it wasn't entirely true either. She was still competitive but she'd learned that the best rewards often came from letting him win.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," she parried instead.

He leered at her. "I think it's sexy that you're competitive."

She smirked. "I'm beginning to think you find everything about me to be sexy."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," he parroted her words from a moment ago.

She laughed softly and leaned in to kiss him. "Not a bad thing, Castle," she murmured against his lips. "It's a good thing," she husked just before she kissed him.

And as usual when she kissed him, her mind went blissfully blank, her last coherent thought being that kissing Castle was a very, very good thing indeed. Then her mind stopped working entirely, in favor of focusing on the sensations, on the soft pressure of his mouth, the taste of him, the warmth of his skin. One of his hands came up to cup her jaw while the other settled on her waist and then inched its way under the hem of her shirt but then didn't stray any further. The kiss stayed relatively soft, her lips lingering against his.

But eventually, she drew back slowly, reluctantly, just enough to rest her forehead against his.

An easy silence settled over them and she kept her eyes closed and simply relaxed against him.

After a long moment, he finally broke the silence by murmuring, "Have I ever told you that you are a very good kisser?"

She huffed a soft laugh. "Right back at you, Castle."

She swore she could sense his delight at the compliment although he didn't say anything more.

It was another few minutes before she finally opened her eyes and lifted her head, her gaze drawn to the screensaver of his laptop loudly proclaiming _You should be writing!_

She smiled, amused as always by this chosen method of self-motivation. "Did you manage to get some writing done?"

"Hmm? Oh, no, got distracted," he said rather absently and then went on, "I want to talk to you about something."

She straightened up further at his tone. "You're sounding very serious all of a sudden, Castle," she said lightly. "What is it?"

"I was thinking about your mom, your mom's legacy," he began, a note of caution entering his voice.

"Oh," was all she could say, rather lamely, feeling the sharp tug of melancholy, which the mention of her mother always provoked.

"I was thinking that you would want to do something to honor your mom and that reminded me. Remember the idea I had last year about starting a scholarship in your mom's name?"

Did she remember? Kate felt absurd, ridiculous tears pricking at the back of her eyes. As if she would ever forget anything about that evening, about the idea he had had. A scholarship fund in her mother's name to honor her legacy. It was the nicest, most thoughtful thing anyone had ever wanted to do for her. She had kissed him for it. If she hadn't already been in love with him, she thought she would have fallen in love with him at that moment just for thinking of it, because of all it indicated about how well he understood her and how much he was willing to do for her.

She had kissed him—and then she had run from him. She pushed the reproachful memory aside; she still hated that the memory of their first kiss had been somehow tainted by her own cowardice in fleeing from him immediately afterwards, in spite of all that had happened since then. The thought of it cast a shadow over her heart, knotted it with remorse that what should have been a moment of nothing but love—and lust—had been blended in with fear (on her part) and hurt (on his).

"I remember," she finally managed to say, giving him a faint smile. "How could I forget one of the nicest things anyone has ever wanted to do for me?"

Pleasure brightened his eyes although his expression remained thoughtful. "We haven't really talked about it since then. I… got distracted," he added, his lips quirking in a way that told her he was referring to their first kiss, their first night together, and all the nights since then. "And then the summer was busy with me finishing the edits on _Naked Heat_ and then having to leave on that book tour. But anyway, I was thinking that now would be the perfect time to really get the ball rolling on setting up the scholarship, if you agree to it," he finished, a touch of uncertainty entering his voice.

"Of course I agree," she told him softly, lifting a hand to his face, smoothing one finger lightly down the faint frown line that appeared between his eyebrows when he was brooding over something or simply concentrating intensely. "It's so sweet of you."

He shrugged off the compliment and continued on more briskly. "Setting up the scholarship will take a little time and then planning for a fundraiser like this has to be done months ahead of time but if we start now, we should easily be able to have everything in place to have the fundraiser sometime in the fall, maybe late September or October, which is probably the best time for these things anyway. The summer isn't a good time for fundraisers like this because the bigwigs and rich people leave for vacation or to their summer homes and generally flee the city before the horde of tourists descend."

He really had put a lot of thought into this, she thought, feeling a flutter of mingled surprise—the same sense of surprise she still tended to feel, in spite of everything when Castle occasionally revealed the shrewd businessman side of his character—and pleasure at how much he was willing to do for her. To honor her mother. Oh, this man, this dear, generous man, how could she possibly deserve this man?

"That makes sense. What would we need to do?" It didn't come naturally to her to ask questions like this, let someone else take the lead, but she realized, it was getting easier to admit she needed help to Castle. She didn't kid herself that she had gotten much better at showing vulnerability to anyone else in the world—and in many ways, she wasn't sure she either needed or wanted to change that—but at least to Castle, with Castle, she didn't need to be the one with all the answers or the plans.

And she had to admit that this world of big fundraisers, the world of high society with the very rich along with the movers and shakers, was Castle's milieu, not hers. She remembered accompanying Castle to the MADT fundraiser, how out of place she had felt. She might have grown up privileged compared to the average cop; her family had been comfortably well-off but even back then, before her mom's death and years of being a cop had changed her perspective even more, the gap between her background and the level of wealth on display at a fundraiser like that of MADT had been as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon.

"Well, for the scholarship part, I can set up a meeting for us with the Dean of your mom's law school to talk over logistics like the details of the qualifications and how recipients would be chosen. I was thinking maybe your dad could come with us too; as a lawyer himself, he and the Dean probably know better about how the scholarship should be set up."

He left unsaid that her dad had known her mom better than anyone, that this scholarship for her mom and being able to contribute to the planning of it would mean a lot to her dad, but she knew he realized that too. And she loved him for it. She would never have realized just how much it would mean to her that her boyfriend, any man she was involved with, got along with and liked her father. But every time she saw Castle with her dad, every time Castle mentioned her dad, her heart seemed to melt, her chest filling with warmth.

"Dad will appreciate it; I'm sure he'd love to come with us." And so he would. She had not told him about Castle's original suggestion to start a scholarship in her mother's name but she could only imagine that telling her dad would complete the process of making her dad regard Castle in the light of the perfect man for her.

"Good. And as for the fundraiser itself, I'll have Paula connect me with the event planner who's been in charge of my last couple book launch parties."

For the first time, she hesitated. She thought about the two of his book parties she had seen and inwardly grimaced. They had been so… over the top, so flashy. So populated by under-dressed girls wanting Castle to sign their chests, an errant voice in her mind spoke up—and she shoved the thought aside. That part didn't matter and anyway, she trusted Castle and knew he wouldn't be signing any more chests in the future. What did matter was that his parties had been so far removed from any atmosphere that would be even remotely appropriate to the cause her mother had championed, of giving justice to the disadvantaged.

"But those were parties; this will be a fundraiser," she inserted rather lamely, not quite sure how to phrase her concern.

For the first time, he smirked slightly. "Oh, don't hold back, Beckett, you can say it. My book launch parties are too glitzy and ostentatious for your taste."

She flushed. "I just… don't think it would be appropriate for the sort of scholarship we're trying to set up."

He laughed a little. "How tactful of you, Detective," he teased. "Well, you'll be reassured to know that the event planner has handled all sorts of events to my knowledge; we can explain to her that it should be less about glitz and more about elegance, but you know, there'll need to be some glamour involved just because the people we'll invite will expect it. Think about the MADT fundraiser we went to—and danced at," he added with something approaching a leer entering his expression.

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Is that supposed to mean that the fundraiser will involve auctioning off a date with you?"

"Maybe," he quipped.

She just had time to narrow her eyes at him before he added, "A very _private_ auction where bidding will be restricted to only one person… you."

"What makes you think I'd pay to go out with you?" she asked tartly to hide her renegade little thrill at his answer.

"I'd pay you back."

She had to laugh. "Let me get this straight. You'll pay me to pay to go out with you?"

"Put like that, it sounds silly."

"That's nothing new for you. You're frequently silly."

"I am a marvel of good sense and practicality," he declared with mock offense.

She snorted. "Says the man who believes in aliens and ghosts and Bigfoot."

"I will have you know that lots of very well-respected scientists, including Jane Goodall, agree that an apex primate like Bigfoot may well be real," he huffed.

"And of course there's 'scientists' like Benny Stryker who believe in the existence of aliens," she teased.

"Who used to be colleagues with Marie Subbarao, who was a sober-minded scientist," he shot back.

She grimaced a little. "Until she ended up being explosively decompressed."

"How she died had nothing to do with how good a scientist she was."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. If she hadn't been such a good scientist, she might not have noticed the signal anomalies that clued her in to Vaughn's scheming."

He inclined his head. "Fair point. But Beckett, I think we've strayed from the subject of the fundraiser. I think the event planner can manage it and after all, we'll have final say over what gets planned so you'll be able to step in and keep it from becoming too flashy."

She sobered. "You really have put a lot of thought into this."

It was dawning on her not just how much thought he had already put into this but just how involved and complicated a process this would be. She didn't doubt for a second that Castle was fully aware of how much would be involved, how much he would likely need to do, even if he did staff it out to people like Paula and the event planner. He would be the host of the event, as he had offered to be; he would be the one finally responsible for approving the details. She could only help so much with the hours she worked and more practically, her very limited knowledge of how these big high society fundraisers operated. And he was going to do all this for _her_. Oh god. Her throat was suddenly tight with emotion.

He shrugged. "I had time tonight since I was so unceremoniously banished from my own living room by my mother, my daughter, and my partner," he said lightly with an exaggerated pout.

It was like him to disclaim thanks but she couldn't be quite so cavalier about it. He was doing so much for her—and she couldn't imagine how she deserved it, how she deserved to be loved by this man with his limitless generosity. She didn't deserve him but oh, how she loved him. She was suddenly reminded of the time he had given her the keepsake box where she kept her father's watch—that he'd fixed for her— and her mother's ring, along with the DVD set of _Temptation Lane_. She hadn't been able to find the words then either and this meant so much more to her. As usual, her words failed her when it came to the things she felt the most. "Still. I just…" she began rather awkwardly. "This is so sweet of you."

He pasted on a leer. "No need to thank me, Beckett. This is all part of my devious plan to ensure I get to take you to another black tie event and see you all dressed up and devastatingly sexy."

She choked on a laugh at his phrasing, even as she felt herself flush. Devastatingly sexy…

"Thank you, Rick," she whispered just before she kissed him and she thought, she hoped, he understood that what she meant was _I love you too._

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: As always, thank you, everyone, for reading. All reviews are very much appreciated._


	18. Chapter 17: Final Nail 1

Author's Note: The first of 4—yes, 4—chapters revolving around "The Final Nail." It's entirely possible I've gone overboard in how much time I'm spending on this one ep and all I can say in my defense is that it involves Caskett's first Valentine's Day together and then the ep itself is one I really like for what it says about Castle and Beckett's relationship at that point in canon. Beyond that, I will leave it to you all to judge if it's getting too repetitive by rehashing familiar dialogue.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 17_

Kate looked up as Alexis came running down the stairs. "You ready to go, Alexis?"

"Yes, I'm all set," Alexis answered lightly. "We'll see you later, Dad."

"You sure I can't come with you two?" Castle asked.

Kate smirked. She'd known he was going to ask that. He had, at least, heroically refrained from pestering either her or Alexis if he could join them for dinner since the other day when Alexis had asked but she had expected that his self-restraint would fail him at the last. And as she'd prophesied, so it proved.

"We're going out for a couple hours of girl talk, Castle. I'm sure you'd be bored silly."

"Hey, I'll have you know that I once spent an entire afternoon in a nail salon learning how to apply nail polish! I'm great at listening to girl talk!"

Kate and Alexis both laughed. That seemed to be taking it a little far even for Castle's metrosexual side.

"Really, Dad? When did you do that?"

Castle gave Alexis a look of mock reproach. "You seem to have forgotten that I was the one who showed you how to put on nail polish. As flattered as I am that you appear to think I would know everything, I have to admit that at the time, I didn't have the slightest clue how to apply nail polish so I decided to go to a professional and ask."

Alexis's expression softened while Kate's heart melted a little. He was such a good father; she couldn't think of another man who would have been willing to do such a thing. Even her own father would probably have flatly refused if anyone had suggested he learn how to apply nail polish in order to show her.

"I didn't know you did that, Dad."

"Well, I hardly wanted to advertise it." He paused and turned to Kate, narrowing his eyes at her. "And if you dare mention this to the boys, I'll never make you coffee again."

"That's cruel and unusual punishment, Castle," she pretended to grumble since she knew perfectly well that he wouldn't carry out the threat—and in all honesty, she had no intention of mentioning this to the boys, who would torment the life out of Castle if they heard.

Besides, teasing him about things like this, things that related to Alexis, was her job, not theirs.

"Just keep that in mind and don't tell them."

"Oh fine," she gave in with exaggerated reluctance. "Your secret's safe with me."

"Good."

Alexis bent and kissed Castle's cheek. "Thank you for that, Dad. But you're still not coming with me and Kate tonight."

He huffed. "Fine, but you're both mean."

Kate laughed. "You'll get over it, Castle."

"Later, Dad."

"Have fun, you two."

Kate and Alexis left the loft with a wave for Castle and then glanced at each other and laughed simultaneously.

"I would pay good money to see a picture of your dad sitting in a nail salon," Kate grinned.

"So would I," Alexis agreed. "Too bad I didn't know about it until today."

"He was really the one who showed you how to put on nail polish?"

"Oh, yeah, I remember that. I think I was around 8 or something. Some of the girls in my class had started to put on nail polish and were very proud of themselves for doing such a grown-up thing and one day after school, I came home to find that my dad had bought a bunch of different nail polish and he did my nails and showed me how to put on nail polish myself."

"That sounds nice." Kate smiled at the mental picture of young Alexis seated in front of Castle as he painted her nails.

She remembered her own mom doing much the same thing years ago and how proud she had been to have nail polish on like a real grown-up. It was, now that she thought about it, the sort of thing that mothers did for their daughters. She should have known that Castle would have done something like that for Alexis. She knew from things Castle had let slip that he had spent some time learning how to braid Alexis's hair including how to do proper French braids. And she knew better than to ask where Meredith had been at the time.

"Yeah, it was nice." Alexis's expression sobered. "I never stopped to wonder where Dad learned how to put on nail polish."

"I'm sure he didn't mind learning. He probably used it as research for one of his books," Kate said lightly, wanting to dispel the sudden guilt clouding Alexis's expression, the burden that came from knowing someone had done something for you which hadn't been nearly appreciated enough at the time. She knew Castle wouldn't want Alexis to feel that way; it likely had not even occurred to Castle to do anything different. "Come to think of it, didn't _Bullets and Bracelets_ involve a girl who worked in a nail salon?"

Alexis's expression cleared as she smiled. "You're right, it did. I'd forgotten about that." She gave Kate a teasing look. "Wow, you really do like Dad's books, don't you, Kate? I didn't even remember that about the nail salon girl."

Kate laughed, even as she felt herself flush a little. She'd betrayed herself with that question. The girl who worked in a nail salon hadn't been that major a character in the book. "I have a good memory for books," she demurred instead.

Alexis grinned. "Still, I bet Dad loves it. He always pouts when I don't remember some detail from his books. One time, we were talking and I mentioned a plot point from _Storm's Last Stand_ but said it was from _Storm Warning_ by mistake and Dad looked at me as if I'd just set one of his books on fire right in front of him."

"I can imagine that."

"I brought him breakfast in bed the next morning to make up for it."

Kate's grin softened. "That was nice of you." She couldn't imagine that Castle would really have been upset by it; he would have been faking petulance in his usual childish fashion, she knew.

Alexis shrugged a little, a mischievous glint lighting up her eyes in that way that was so reminiscent of Castle. "Doing things like that for Dad is a good way of making sure that he'll say yes to the next thing I ask for."

"I am beginning to understand why your dad once told me that you're good at extortion," she said with mock severity.

Alexis pasted on an innocent expression. "I don't know what you're talking about," she responded demurely.

Kate pretended to shake her head at Alexis. "You are definitely your father's daughter."

Alexis grinned at Kate. "I'll take that as a compliment."

Kate smiled and then changed the subject to ask Alexis how she'd done on the physics quiz she'd had last week.

Alexis had (unsurprisingly) done well and afterwards, she easily went on to chatting about her other classes, the book they were reading in her English class and something funny her history teacher had said the other day.

Kate listened and reflected that she would never have thought to enjoy listening to a teenager's prattle about her daily life so much. Looking back now, she knew she'd given her parents a hard time when she had been a teenager and the few teenagers she occasionally had to deal with while working were generally unprepossessing and rather unpleasant. She remembered that prep school case that had been one of the earliest cases she and Castle had worked on. Alexis occasionally had her moods and had disagreements with Castle (usually stemming from Castle's overprotective tendencies) but for the most part, Alexis was a remarkably easy kid to get along with. She was level-headed and serious (sometimes too serious and mature, Kate thought, as if she felt she needed to over-compensate for her father's apparent immaturity and her mother's flightiness) and as far removed from being a troublemaker as it was possible to be.

Castle always said he had lucked out with Alexis and to an extent, it was true, but the better Kate got to know Alexis (and Castle, for that matter), the more she saw that Alexis had not become the way she was from sheer luck or by accident. Kate had read somewhere that children were a mirror of their parents and while Kate didn't feel competent to judge what she herself reflected about her parents, she could see that Alexis was, in spite of the obvious differences, a reflection of Castle, the best parts of his character, everything that made him the responsible and loving and fun parent he was.

She wondered what Castle would be like with their baby.

The thought darted through her mind, shocking her enough that her hands actually jerked on the wheel of her car.

Alexis glanced over, breaking off mid-story. "Kate?"

Kate desperately pushed the thought out of her mind, shoving it behind a mental door and firmly padlocking it shut. Nope, not going there. Not now. Not yet.

She gave Alexis a quick, reassuring smile. "It's nothing, Alexis."

She saw a parking spot open on the curb up ahead and slid into it gratefully. "Let's go eat. You hungry?" she asked lightly.

Alexis answered in the affirmative and Kate easily kept Alexis distracted until after they were seated at the restaurant by the simple means of asking after Ashley.

The subject of Ashley's current fretting as he waited to hear back from colleges naturally took some time and it was only after recounting some of the various things Ashley had said and how Alexis had responded that Alexis added, "That's actually partly why I wanted to talk to you, Kate. He's stressing out lately so I want to cheer him up but I can't think of what to get him for Valentine's Day and it's our first Valentine's Day together too. Do you have any suggestions?"

Kate had to bite back the sudden wish to laugh hysterically to find herself being asked for advice on a Valentine's Day gift for Alexis's boyfriend when she herself had been wondering for days now what she could get Castle for Valentine's Day. But in spite of her renegade amusement, she wasn't immune to the rush of pleasure she felt that Alexis wanted to ask her this in the first place.

As much as she felt the occasional pang of sorrow from being reminded of past times with her own mom, she treasured all the times Alexis turned to her for advice or help or just to talk to. She wasn't Alexis's mom—couldn't be Alexis's mom—but she was Alexis's friend—and someday, maybe, she would be Alexis's stepmother, part of her family in truth. (The thought of becoming Alexis's stepmother had stopped alarming her.)

"I don't know about specific suggestions, Alexis," she finally said. "You know Ashley better than I do. You should get him something that you think will make him smile when he sees it, something that shows that you know him and what he likes."

Alexis made a small face. "All the things that immediately come to mind seem so lame. Like I know what music he likes and the sorts of movies he likes but getting him a CD or a DVD seems stupid and impersonal. It's _Valentine's_ Day, you know? I want to get him something romantic but he's a boy so I don't even know what that would mean, really."

Kate could certainly sympathize with that. And high school relationships were harder in some ways to find appropriate Valentine's Day gifts too because they couldn't, of necessity, cost too much money and shouldn't appear to presume too much. The thought triggered a memory from her own high school days.

"One thing I will say, Alexis, is to be careful not to give Ashley something personalized with your names on it, just in case. Not because I think you and Ashley will break up," she added quickly, making her voice as mild as she could, "but because you never really know what will happen. One of my friends in high school made the mistake of having matching t-shirts made for her and her boyfriend at the time, saying 'I heart Chrissy' for him and one saying 'I heart Jake' for her, and then they ended up having a big fight about two months later and broke up."

Alexis winced in sympathy. "Ouch, that must have made having those shirts awkward."

"Awkward is one word for it," Kate agreed. "My friend cut the shirt up into pieces with scissors before throwing it away and there were rumors going around the school that he might have actually tried to set fire to his, although I don't think that's true."

Alexis grimaced. "Right. Okay, I won't give Ashley anything personalized like that. That makes sense. Any other ideas, Kate?"

Kate tried to think back. What had she given to any of her old high school boyfriends for Valentine's Day? She was coming up with a blank. She couldn't remember actually giving any boy anything because for most of high school, she'd been rebelling against the crass commercialism of the entire holiday, deemed herself to be too cool for that sort of thing.

And she hadn't been in any relationships serious enough to warrant doing anything for Valentine's Day since her mom had died except for Will. And Will had been a practical person, not the sort to really appreciate sentimental gestures, even if she had been inclined to make some big romantic gesture. She had bought him his favorite sprinkle donuts that morning and given him a nice, new holster for his gun with his initials tooled into the leather. It was the sort of useful gift Will preferred and as it turned out, Will had been pulled into working on a big racketeering case and she had been on shift that Valentine's Day so they had needed to take a rain check on celebrating it anyway.

She really couldn't pull anything from her own personal experience of Valentine's Day to give Alexis much in the way of ideas.

"I really don't know, Alexis. Maybe think of a running joke between you and Ashley, something that the two of you share but that other people don't really understand the significance of? Something based on that sort of thing might make a nice gift."

Alexis heaved an exaggerated sigh. (Definitely Martha Rodgers's granddaughter.) "Dating is so stressful, Kate."

Kate suppressed a smile. Alexis wasn't often so dramatic so it always amused her to see the usually level-headed girl acting more like a regular teen and one who, as Martha would say, had acting in her blood.

"Valentine's Day can be stressful," Kate sympathized with more calm.

"It really is," Alexis agreed. "Why are boys so hard to shop for? I had a hard enough time coming up with something to give Ashley for Christmas but at least a Christmas gift didn't really need to be romantic but now for Valentine's Day, it does need to be romantic and I just have no idea what to get him."

Kate made a noncommittal murmur of agreement and went on listening as Alexis brainstormed ideas for Ashley's gift aloud, making the occasional response when required.

While part of her brain returned to her own similar problem—what on earth she was supposed to give Castle for Valentine's Day. Their first Valentine's Day. The first Valentine's Day of what she fully hoped (and expected) would be the last romantic relationship of her life. (Oh god.)

And that was really it. It wasn't the pressure inherent in it being their first Valentine's Day together that really had her mind circling around this so much than it was her own personal wish to give Castle something special. She _loved_ him, loved him so much it terrified her still at times when she thought about how much she needed him, how vital he had become to her life and her happiness. If she ever lost him, if anything happened to their relationship, she honestly didn't think she would ever get over it.

She loved him and she wanted to give him something that would tell him just what he meant to her.

But what could she possibly give a man who already had everything? She didn't often dwell on the disparity in their financial situations but the knowledge of Castle's wealth was certainly not making things easier for her right now. She'd never been in such an unequal relationship when it came to their respective financial situations. Castle was a multimillionaire. He was a man who had given $100,000 without blinking in order to try to catch her mother's killer; he owned a Ferrari and a huge house in the Hamptons. Her entire yearly salary wasn't even a blip compared to his total net worth. He might not value money much for its own sake; she remembered what he'd told her last week during the Jay Hixton case, that he'd realized that the only luxury he truly cared about was freedom. He liked having money, liked being able to spoil the people he cared about, she knew, but money wasn't an end for him, just a means. She liked that about him.

But all that didn't change the stark fact that Castle's wealth made getting him a gift more challenging.

What could she give him? He was a romantic, appreciated sentiment. And she knew that he would probably value anything she gave him but that hardly helped. She wanted to give him something really meaningful, something he had never received before.

Something, she thought, that money couldn't buy, not only because just about anything money could buy, Castle probably had already, but because something like that would mean more to him.

She thought about her own advice to Alexis just now, something that she and Castle shared but that other people might not understand. Coffee was the thing that came most quickly to mind but she could hardly get him coffee for Valentine's Day.

What could she get Castle for Valentine's Day?

She still hadn't managed to think of an answer to that question by the time she and Alexis finished dinner and arrived back at the loft.

Alexis gave her a quick hug. "Thanks for dinner, Kate, and for listening. It gave me some ideas about what to give Ashley."

"Anytime, Alexis."

Alexis disappeared upstairs with a last smile and Kate knew the girl was going up to call Ashley for their nightly phone call.

Kate peeked into Castle's office to see that he was, as she'd rather guessed he would be when he didn't appear to greet them on their return, writing. Not wanting to disturb him, she grabbed a book from his shelves and settled on the couch to read.

It was a little while before he appeared in the doorway from his office, rolling his shoulders to loosen them as he usually did when he'd been sitting at his desk for a while. "Oh, hey, Beckett, you're back."

She put her book down. "Hey yourself. You got some writing done?"

"Yeah, I figured I should." He threw himself down on the couch beside her and then slung his arm around her shoulder, tugging her in against him so she ended up snugly tucked in against his side. He kissed her forehead and then her lips briefly. "Mm, hi," he murmured, more softly.

She smiled and kissed his chin. "Hi."

"How was your dinner with Alexis?"

"It was fine. You know I like spending time with her."

"What did she want to talk to you about?"

"Mostly about Ashley. She's not sure what to get him for Valentine's Day and wondered if I had any advice."

He pulled an exaggerated pout. "She hasn't asked me for any advice about what to give Ashley. And I'm a great gift-giver! I'd be good at giving advice for that! Why hasn't she asked me?"

Kate smirked at him. "I don't know, Castle. Maybe she just thought it's been so long since you were in high school that you couldn't remember what might be appropriate in a high school relationship."

"Hey!" He narrowed his eyes at her in a mock scowl. "I am so going to make you pay for that, Beckett."

She hid her smirk. It might not be nice of her but she rather enjoyed teasing him like this because Castle's usual form of retaliation was very, very pleasant. She pushed the imaginings of what Castle would do to her later out of her mind; that was a dangerous line of thought considering how early in the evening it was and that they were sitting in the living room in full view of Alexis if she chose to come downstairs.

She said, instead, more seriously, "I think she just thought it might be better to get the perspective of another woman on what sort of romantic gifts would be appropriate to give." She paused and then asked, quietly, "Castle, you don't mind that Alexis wanted to talk to me about this, do you?"

She thought that his pout over Alexis not asking him for advice about what to give Ashley had been joking, his mock petulance and tendency to melodrama, but it suddenly occurred to her to wonder if there hadn't been a kernel of truth to his joking. He did tend to deflect attention from things that bothered him by using humor. And he had joked before about being deserted in the other times when she and Alexis went out for one of their occasional girls nights out.

Maybe Castle really did mind when Alexis asked her for advice without turning to him first. After all, Castle had been all Alexis had for pretty much Alexis's entire life. He was used to being her go-to guy, as he'd put it. She suddenly remembered the thread of real hurt she'd seen over the fact that Alexis had talked to her and to Martha about being in love before Alexis had told Castle about Ashley.

She had promised never to come between Castle and Alexis and she realized that her promise went two ways, to Castle just as much as it did to Alexis. She didn't want Castle to feel as if she was somehow interfering with his relationship with his daughter. Dating someone with a kid was, she thought, complicated in more ways than one. It was something she hadn't thought much about lately as Alexis was so clearly welcoming and affectionate, but now it occurred to her that maybe Castle really might start to feel left out with the way she and Alexis had grown closer.

She knew just how important Alexis was to him, how much he treasured his relationship with Alexis.

He sobered, all traces of humor vanishing from his eyes and expression. "Mind? Only insofar as I mind that Alexis is growing up so quickly. She's…" he sighed a little, his shoulders slumping, "not my little girl anymore, not the way she used to be. She's almost grown up and she has a boyfriend now," he added, making a small face at the reference to Ashley. "I feel like I'm a… bystander or something in her life, just watching from the outside. But that has nothing to do with you, Kate. It's just me, needing to come to terms with the fact that my little girl is growing up."

Oh Castle. She was a little surprised—and pleased—that Castle was telling her this; she knew he didn't share his vulnerabilities easily, any more than she did. And she loved knowing that she was the one he talked to about things like this, loved knowing that he talked to her about his concern over Alexis. Alexis, who was the most precious thing in Castle's life. She hadn't realized that Alexis's increasing maturity and independence—as symbolized by her relationship with Ashley—was bothering him quite so much.

"Alexis loves you and she needs you," Kate told him softly.

"I know she does but it's not quite the same. She used to tell me everything, said I was her best friend. And I just… miss that."

"She's growing up but Castle, believe me when I say that it doesn't make you a bystander or an outsider in her life." She stopped, hesitating.

She, of all people, understood just how important it was to have a parent, a father, to be there, no matter how grown up one might believe oneself to be as a teenager or a college student. Kate herself would have said when she'd graduated high school and afterwards that she was a grown-up who didn't really need her parents looking over her shoulder or telling her what to do. Part of the reason she had chosen to go to Stanford in the first place was because she had wanted to branch out and felt like she could only really do so as far away from her parents as possible. (It had taken months of therapy before Kate had learned to forgive herself for that.) Only to feel like the bottom had dropped out of her world when her mother had died and when her dad had spent the next years drowning in a bottle. Oh, she knew what it was like not to have parents to rely on and she knew how much it meant to her to have her dad back. She might not rely on her dad the way she had before, might not ever be able to regain that confidence in him which she had once had—but she did need her dad. Not quite as a source of strength but as a comfort, somehow, just to know he was there for her, even if she never quite let herself lean on him.

She swallowed back the lump of emotion at the thought, the memories. She had never talked about this with anyone but right now, seeing the shadows clouding Castle's eyes, she thought she could. She wanted to, even, to make him feel better. And after all, this was what it meant to love someone, to put their own needs above your own. It wasn't… easy and it didn't come naturally to her. She had been hurt too deeply in the past and it had made her defensive and, yes, selfish. She had barricaded herself behind her wall, holding herself back, at first because she had needed to, had needed all her own strength just to focus on her own survival and it hadn't left her with any resources left to give to anyone else. She had made herself become independent, standing alone, not allowing anyone else close enough to give her much but also not close enough for anyone else to need or expect much from her either. For years, her dad had been the only person she had allowed to be so close to her; her dad had been the only person she allowed to rely on her.

But then she'd fallen in love with Castle and determined to take down her wall, to really be with him. To let him comfort her but also to comfort him when he needed it. Now, she thought she was strong enough, whole enough, that she could give support, as well as receive it.

"Alexis needs you, Rick. She might not talk about every detail of her life with you but she does need you. You're… her safe harbor for her to return to. She might sail out of the harbor but in the end, she'll always need that harbor to come back to, to replenish her supplies, to make any repairs."

"She's… a ship now?"

She poked him in the side. "Shut up, Castle. You're the writer, not me. I'm just saying, she still needs you. She might not talk about it all the time and it might not be as obvious as needing you to feed her or tie her shoelaces for her but she does. Believe me, Rick, I know… I know how much I still need my dad now and I know how much I needed my dad when—when I was in college."

He sucked in a sharp breath, tightening his arm around her shoulders. "Kate…"

She managed a twitch of her lips that was the closest she could manage to a reassuring smile at the moment. He understood what she was talking about. She'd known he would.

"I'm Alexis's friend and I'm happy to be there for her when she wants to talk about clothes or her boyfriend or anything else but you're her _dad_ , Castle. You're still the one she'll turn to first if anything is ever really bothering her. And no one can take the place of a dad, no matter how grown-up she might become."

He drew her in closer so he could kiss her softly, tenderly. "You're incredible, you know that?"

Her heart fluttered almost in spite of herself at the utter sincerity in his tone, in his eyes. She was amazed all over again that he, who knew her so well, knew how prickly and closed-off she could be, how stubborn, still thought that she was incredible. She didn't think she deserved it but in these moments when he looked at her so, with such honest admiration in his eyes, she thought that his faith in her helped her to try to be as extraordinary as he already thought she was. He saw the best in her and made her want to be the best version of herself.

"It's not incredible; I've just been there, that's all. And Castle, listening to Alexis, I don't think you need to worry that she thinks of you as being a bystander. I don't think you know how much Alexis talks about you."

He pulled a small face, although she could see how much the words meant to him in his eyes. "I'm not sure her talking about me is such a good thing. How am I going to retain my status as a man of mystery with Alexis giving away all my secrets?" he joked lightly.

She couldn't quite help her snort. "Since when are you a man of mystery, Castle?"

He really wasn't. He was a more private person than she would ever have expected when they first met, when she had thought of him as the annoying jackass who lived his entire life on Page Six, but he was hardly a man of mystery either. He tended to wear his heart on his sleeve in many ways, even if he could be reticent when it came to actually talking about the things that upset him.

"I could be a man of mystery if I wanted to be," he insisted, although his lips were twitching.

She laughed softly. "Sure you could, Castle," she placated and then found herself adding, "But you're the one who says that I'm a mystery and I don't think it'd be good if we were both mysteries."

"You sure you won't get bored when there's nothing more to learn about me?" he asked lightly enough but she thought she could see a hint of insecurity lurking in his eyes. The insecurity that he generally hid so well behind his veneer of cockiness and smug self-satisfaction but she knew he felt, the insecurity borne of two failed marriages (one where Meredith had cheated on him) and Kyra who had left him.

Oh, she really did need to come up with a Valentine's Day gift for him that could somehow eradicate any uncertainties he still had about her and her feelings for him. She might not feel like she deserved it but he never ever let her doubt his feelings for her. He made her feel safe in a way she had almost forgotten what it was to feel like and she wanted him to feel as safe, as certain of her.

And she couldn't imagine ever being bored with him. He was her favorite writer from long before she'd ever met him; he was… the man who had taught her to believe again in the possibility of magic.

"You might not be a man of mystery," she told him softly, leaning in until their breaths mingled. "But you are a man of magic so I won't get bored," she promised. And sealed the promise with a kiss.

* * *

Kate left the precinct with a wave of farewell to Esposito and Ryan, ignoring the fact that Espo had teasingly looked pointedly at the clock when he saw her leaving. Yes, she was aware that she was, for one of the few times in her career, leaving the precinct actually at the end of her shift.

It wasn't like she hadn't gotten plenty of work done. It had been a paperwork day and although Castle had shown up this morning as he always did with coffee and a bear claw for her, he had not stayed long. He'd acquired that absent look of his and then pulled out the little notebook he always carried and started to scribble in it and she had sent him home with a promise to call him if a body dropped. She could see that he wanted to write and it was only a paperwork day so, as much as she liked having him around, there was no need for him to stay just to watch her doing paperwork. He had made a rather token protest but in the end, had acquiesced to her telling him to go write, although he had made her a last cup of coffee before he left.

She had spent the entire day working on the seemingly never-ending stream of paperwork required by the higher-ups at One PP and made a respectable dent in the stack after a day of focusing on it with her usual intensity. But though she didn't like to admit it, she had to acknowledge that somehow Castle, in his absence, was rather more of a distraction than his presence was. It irritated her but it was true, not only because without Castle, she had to stop to make her own coffee but because when he wasn't there, the sight of his empty chair tugged at her consciousness, a sense of something being missing nagging at her in that way that happened when she felt like she was forgetting something.

She could laugh at herself for it. How it had happened that she, who had been so irritated by Castle when he had first started to shadow her, who had found it so hard to adjust to the distraction of his persistent presence, as if he were an itch that simply wouldn't go away, now found herself distracted by his _absence_. He really had woven himself through every part of her life.

She had, however, willed herself to concentrate and been mostly successful, had been briskly efficient in getting through her paperwork. She expected the people at One PP who received all her reports from today would probably smile, as much as they were capable of smiling, at how much she had managed to complete so she was nearly entirely caught up.

After that, Kate felt entirely entitled to leave the precinct at the end of her shift. Besides which, she was tired in that way that only doing paperwork fatigued her, her hand was stiff from the amount of writing and typing she had needed to do, and her very eyes felt weary from spending the better part of the day staring at her computer screen.

She let out a little sigh of relief as she got into her car. It still surprised her a little that spending an entire day chasing down leads on an active case didn't wear her out as much as a day of paperwork did but it was true. When she was on a case, adrenaline and her own drive for justice fueled her so she was rarely conscious of being tired at all; paperwork did not have anywhere near that kind of energizing effect. If anything, it enervated her.

All the more so because Castle had not been there. Aside from distracting her, his absence also made the day seem immeasurably longer and more tiring. It just helped her to be able to glance up occasionally and see him, meet his eyes and see the warmth in them, not least because of the way his timely provision of coffee added to her energy levels except it wasn't only the coffee, she knew. It was the way his thoughtfulness warmed her heart, the way he occasionally traced designs in the foam that never failed to infuse her day with a little more happiness. Without him there, it was just… harder. To say nothing of more boring.

She didn't particularly like knowing how much she'd come to depend on his presence at work—it chafed at her independent instincts—but she told herself that having him around made her better at her job, just as his addition had made the team's case closure rate go up.

Either way, the fact remained that she was tired and very glad to leave the precinct.

She was so very ready to relax over dinner and possibly a glass of wine and then maybe a bath, assuming a body didn't drop that evening.

Yes, she decided, dinner and wine to start with to unwind and then she might read a little before taking a long bath.

She had just come to this conclusion when she automatically stopped at a red light and registered exactly where she was. Oh. She was more than halfway to the loft already, as if her body had subconsciously directed her there without her conscious mind deciding it. She had wanted to unwind and, for her, now, somehow, that meant Castle and the loft.

For pretty much her entire adult life, when she was tired or upset in any way, she had sought out solitude; the quiet of her own apartment had been what she needed to rest and recharge. Except that wasn't true anymore. Not really. She still needed space and alone time but she'd found that those times were fewer and shorter than she would ever have expected and that afterwards, she liked to be able to curl up in his presence. She didn't necessarily want or need his _attention_ at such times but being in his presence was enough.

She parked her car and hurried out of the February chill into the lobby of the building, raising a hand in greeting to Peter, the doorman on duty today.

"Windy out there today, isn't it, Detective?" he greeted her.

"It definitely is," she agreed. It was one of those winter days when all of Manhattan seemed to have turned into a series of wind tunnels, the wind biting through layers of clothing.

"Have a good evening, Detective."

"You too, Peter."

She could have used her key to the loft as she usually did these days but decided to ring the bell since he wasn't actually expecting her.

She heard the muffled sound of his voice saying something—to Alexis, she guessed—before he opened the door.

"Beckett," he greeted her with a little surprise and more pleasure.

She gave him a small teasing smile. "Do you have room for one more for dinner?"

He laughed and tugged her forward. "I was just about to text you to see if you wanted to come over once your shift ended."

"I guess I just saved you the trouble, then."

"My fingers thank you," he said with mock solemnity, wiggling said fingers at her until she lightly swatted them.

Alexis looked up from the salad she was tossing at the kitchen island and sent Kate a smile. "Hi, Kate."

"Hi, Alexis." Kate finished putting her coat away and locking up her gun before joining the girl in the kitchen. "Do you need any help?"

Alexis waved her away and predictably, Castle was the one who answered aloud, "No, things are pretty much done already, Beckett. All you can do is pick out a bottle of wine if you want some."

She went over to the wine cooler and grabbed a bottle while Castle pulled out the corkscrew and two glasses.

"Just a little for me, Castle, since I'm on call."

He nodded. "Right."

He poured her half a glass before pouring the same for himself and then handing the glass to her.

She lightly clinked her glass against his. "Cheers."

He smiled at her and brushed a quick kiss against her hair.

"So did you get a lot of writing done?"

"About a chapter or so."

"What's Nikki up to now?"

"Oh, hot on the trail of a killer, as usual," he said lightly and unspecifically. Not that she'd been expecting him to actually answer; he was, she had realized, more careful about not giving away spoilers for his books than she might have thought, although she supposed part of that was also experience in that he knew how much stories could change in the writing, no matter how carefully planned the plot outline was. Besides, she didn't want to be spoiled for his books, was happy to wait until the book was finished.

"The salad's ready," Alexis piped up. "So I think we're ready to eat."

The three of them moved easily and smoothly around each other to fill up their plates and move over to the table.

Dinner passed pleasantly and Kate felt herself relaxing more by the minute, the ease and affection permeating the atmosphere of the loft sinking into her.

She loved these family dinners, sometimes with Martha and sometimes without. Loved listening to Alexis's recounting of her day and the way she and Castle listened and chimed in with the occasional comment or question. She was familiar now with Alexis's friends, to say nothing of Ashley, of course, and knew of Alexis's classes and her teachers. It was, she realized, the sort of familiarity with the teen's daily life that her own parents had had when she'd been in high school and more and more these days, she found the thought recurring to her that when the three of them interacted, they sounded and acted like a family. When she and Castle talked to Alexis, they sounded much like her own parents often had, although Alexis was, Kate had to admit, a much more amenable and generally pleasant teenager than she herself had ever been. And the thought was no longer such a painful reminder of her past; she felt wistful and a little melancholy, yes, but mostly she just felt… hopeful. Hopeful and happy.

Oh, yes, she did love these family dinners. This, too, was why she had automatically gravitated here at the end of her shift. It wasn't just about Castle; it was everything that being a part of his family entailed.

They were cleaning up after dinner when Castle's phone rang and he turned away to answer it.

"Castle."

She started to rinse their plates, only vaguely aware of hearing Castle greet the other person, surprise in his voice. "Damian, it's good to hear from you."

But then her attention was abruptly caught when she heard his voice change, a note of shock and dismay in his voice. "Oh God, I'm so sorry."

He listened for a few seconds, a frown forming between his brows, as he glanced at her and then away. "No, of course, I understand. I'll be there as soon as I can." At that statement, Alexis turned to watch her father as well.

"Right. See you soon."

Castle ended the call before turning back to them, his expression troubled. "Sorry, but I have to go. That was an old friend of mine from boarding school and he—his wife was just murdered."

Kate stiffened, her professional instincts kicking in.

Alexis, bless her, reacted only with sympathetic horror. "Oh God, Dad, that's terrible. Of course you should go be with your friend. We'll be fine here."

Castle managed a faint flicker of a smile at that, going over to kiss her hair. "Call me if you need anything, pumpkin."

Kate opened her mouth to ask if she could help but then bit back the words. She couldn't offer such a thing; it would be interfering in another cop's case and she could easily end up being suspended for doing so. And since she'd never even met this old friend of Castle's, she couldn't claim her presence would be any sort of moral support. "I'll finish cleaning up," was all she said instead, rather lamely, since she knew the dirty dishes would be the absolute last thing on his mind right now.

His expression softened a little and he paused to brush a quick kiss against her cheek, almost at the corner of her lips. "I'll see you later."

He paused to shrug into a coat and then left. Kate and Alexis returned to cleaning up after dinner but in another couple minutes, the easy silence was broken again, this time by Kate's phone ringing.

It had to be Dispatch.

Kate hastily dried her hands and picked up her phone. "Beckett."

As she'd expected, it was Dispatch, telling her with its usual curt efficiency the address of the crime scene.

She momentarily wondered—but no, there were multiple murders in New York City just about every night (sadly enough). The chance that this new body drop was the wife of Castle's old friend had to be very slim. It wasn't likely.

She couldn't possibly be that unlucky, right?

"I'll be right there."

She hung up and gave Alexis a half-smile. "Sorry, Alexis, that was work. I need to go too. You'll be all right on your own? When do you think Martha will be home?"

"Oh don't worry about me, Kate. I'll be fine. And if I need anything, I'll call Grams or you or Dad."

"Okay."

"Good luck on the case."

Kate smiled at the girl. "Thanks, Alexis."

She was out of the loft in a matter of a minute, sending Castle a quick text message to let him know they'd caught a new case.

The crime scene wasn't far and as usual, easily spotted with the flashing lights and crime scene tape as Kate pulled up outside of a block of very nice brownstones. There was money involved, in all likelihood.

Ryan and Esposito had just arrived too, she saw, and caught up with her on the sidewalk.

"Hey Beckett," Ryan greeted. "You and Castle have big plans for Valentine's Day, right?"

Kate raised her eyebrows at him. "Hey, Ryan, Espo. As for plans, I guess that depends on this case but assuming we don't have to work, Castle's just told me he's made dinner reservations."

And she still hadn't come up with what to get him for Valentine's Day, which was bothering her because she was, after all, rapidly running out of time. She had, at least, gone out this past weekend and bought some sinfully sexy underwear and matching lingerie for his benefit but beyond that, she was still drawing a blank.

"Where is Castle anyway?" Espo asked.

"Oh, he got a call so he's meeting up with a friend."

Officer Bailey greeted them as they entered, giving them the quick run-down. "The call came in about an hour ago. The owner of the house, Damian Westlake, says all was well when he left at 5 pm to meet his neighbor, Charles Utley, for a game of pick-up."

Wait. Kate briefly froze. No.

"What did you say the owner's name was?"

"Damian Westlake," Bailey repeated. "And the victim's name is Victoria Westlake, his wife."

Damian. She remembered, now, vaguely hearing Castle greeting his friend by that name. Oh god. There couldn't be two murder victims in the City tonight whose husbands were named Damian.

Oh no. Castle's old friend was the husband of the vic, who'd been murdered in her own home. A domestic female homicide victim.

Kate had been a cop too long not to know that this had the potential to get very awkward, at best, very quickly. And for the first time, she regretted intensely that Castle wasn't an official cop so there was no acceptable ground to claim a conflict of interest.

And this was so much worse than even the case involving Kyra's bridesmaid being murdered because there, there'd been very little reason at the beginning to expect that Kyra was involved in any way (and, of course, as it happened, she hadn't been.) This case, though, where Castle knew the husband of the vic—she really didn't like the odds on this case not being terrible.

"Beckett, what's up?" Espo asked, giving her an odd look.

"I… uh… I need to talk to the husband," she said quickly, turning to Bailey. "Where is he?"

Bailey gestured down the hall and Kate nodded, stepping further into the front room just to see the body and the murder weapon, her eyes noting bloody footprints of a dog.

"The Westlakes have a dog so see if any of the neighbors heard barking. We might be able to pinpoint a timeline," she said automatically.

"We canvassed and nobody heard the dog," Bailey responded. "The ME tentatively puts time of death between 4:30 and 6 o'clock."

"Which means she might have been dead before the husband left the house," Kate concluded rather grimly, feeling a chill settle inside her. Oh, she already knew she was going to hate this case.

"The back door was ajar. Officers found what appears to be a gang tag on the back wall of the building. The paint's fresh," Bailey went on.

"I'll reach out to the gang unit, see if they can ID it for us," Espo offered.

"And I'll talk to Mr. Utley," Ryan volunteered.

Kate nodded faintly, at the moment not caring much about the boys. She knew they would do their jobs.

"I'll go talk to the husband," she said again, conscious of a distinct feeling of reluctance dragging at her. But she shoved it aside. She didn't have a choice here. She had a job to do and she would do it.

She made her way quickly down the hall to the other room where she saw a man, who looked distinctly distraught.

"Mr. Westlake, I'm Detective Kate—"

"Beckett!" Castle exclaimed, his expression momentarily lightening from his sobriety. Her heart twisted a little inside her. He looked happy to see her, as always. "This is your case?"

"Yeah, Castle."

His eyes brightened but his expression stayed serious as he turned to look at his friend.

"Damian, this is my partner, Detective Beckett, who I mentioned and she's the best cop in the city so Vicky's case is in the best possible hands."

Mr. Westlake nodded at her. "Detective. It's nice to meet you," he said automatically and then his face abruptly twisted as the commonplace words returned to him, seeming grotesque under the circumstances, as often happened after a shock like this, as she knew all too well. Sometimes, the automatic civilities were a comfort, words to speak without meaning, but in the immediate aftermath, they could also seem almost gruesome, callous, to say something so normal. The irrational incredulity that the world could go on turning when a life had been ripped apart.

"Excuse us a moment, Mr. Westlake," she murmured and gestured with her head to have Castle follow her into the adjoining room.

"This is good," Castle said quietly. "I was thinking that I wished you could work this case so I'd feel more confident that everything was being done to find out who did this and now you are working the case."

Oh god. She knew that it would never occur to Castle that her being assigned this case would get awkward—but it simply wasn't in him to view anyone he knew personally as a potential suspect. He gave people the benefit of the doubt and when it came to people he knew and liked, his loyalty was unshakable. She loved that about him. She just hoped that his trust in her outweighed his instincts for loyalty to his old friend.

"Now that you know this is my case, is there anything you can tell me that might be pertinent?"

"Uh, nothing. I'd never even met Vicky."

Kate really had a bad feeling about this but she hid it as much as possible. "Okay."

She returned to the other room to talk to Mr. Westlake, who had sat down on the couch, his head hanging down. He looked up as they entered the room and Kate settled on the love seat across from Mr. Westlake.

Castle sat down beside his friend, across from her, and Kate tried, very hard, not to read too much into it. It was just weird to be facing Castle during one of these interviews; she was used to Castle being beside her.

"Mr. Westlake, did anything seem unusual or different when you last saw your wife?"

He shook his head, his eyes red-rimmed. "Everything seemed fine when we left. The last thing she said to me was, 'have a good game.'"

"Mr. Westlake, do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm Vicky?"

"No. Everyone loved her," he answered. It was the standard answer. Kate was too much of a cop to believe it but the question was routine, even if the answer was usually this unhelpful (and generally wrong) one.

"Someone spray-painted your back wall. Did you notice anyone suspicious hanging out when you left?"

"No. Vicky shouldn't even have been here. She came home early from work with a headache," Mr. Westlake lamented, his voice cracking ever so slightly.

"Hey, we're gonna catch the guy who did this, okay? I promise," Castle spoke up quietly.

Kate managed not to flinch. It was like him to make such a promise—but she only hoped she could fulfill it without hurting Castle in the process.

"What did she do for a living?"

"Interior design."

"And you?"

Mr. Westlake stared rather blankly at her as if she'd just spoken in tongues.

"Damian's a writer," Castle interjected.

That explained his friendship with Castle. Kate nodded slightly. "Anything I might have read?"

Mr. Westlake shook his head. "Nah, I've never been published."

"How long were the two of you married?"

"Five years."

Kate set her jaw as she asked the next question, the one she had to ask. "And would you characterize your relationship as happy?"

"Whoa. Why would you need to ask that?" Castle interceded before Mr. Westlake had so much as opened his mouth.

She stared at him, feeling a chill settling deeper inside her. This was not a good beginning.

"It's all right, Ricky," Mr. Westlake spoke up. "I loved my wife very much. She was my whole world."

God, there were times she hated her job. She hated that she simply could not believe such sentiments or take people's word at face value when working cases. She was a cynic—she had to be—and she could only hope, desperately, that this would turn out to be one of those cases where her cynicism proved to be unjustified.

"Mr. Westlake, I'm sorry but I'm going to have to ask you a few questions about the murder weapon…"

"Okay," Castle interrupted, holding up his hands in a time-out gesture. "Why would you need to ask him about the murder weapon?"

"Castle," was all she said, quellingly, before returning her gaze to Mr. Westlake. "The nail gun. Was it yours?"

"No. We've been doing some remodeling. Any tools in the house belong to the workmen."

"Did you ever have any…"

"Were there ever any issues with these workmen?" Castle interrupted, steamrollering over her inquiry.

Really?

Kate narrowed her eyes at him. He knew better than to do that!

"Yeah. I overheard Vicky on the phone with someone last Friday evening. She told him he was fired and he shouldn't come back."

"Do you know his name?" Castle asked, again before she could. He had just hijacked her interview!

"No, I asked her about it. She told me it was nothing." Mr. Westlake turned back to Kate. "Talk to Amber Patinelli. Amber works for Vicky." Mr. Westlake stood up. "If you don't mind, I really need to call Vicky's ex-husband, Simon, and her kids. I'm sure the press are going to be all over this and I don't want them to hear about it on television."

"Of course," Castle murmured.

"Excuse me." And just like that, the interview was over as Mr. Westlake left, with Castle's permission.

And she hadn't finished asking her own preliminary questions.

She pinned Castle with a look and then turned and stalked away. She didn't have time for this. She had a job to do and she would do it, with or without Castle's help, though her heart twisted inside her at the thought. She hated this case already.

He caught up with her just outside the brownstone. "Hey, why are you mad at me? I'm just looking out for my friend."

She whirled around to face him, grasping onto her annoyance. Irritation was easier to deal with than her messier, personal emotions. "You challenged my authority in front of a suspect, Castle."

Shock and incredulity flared across his expression, widened his eyes. "Since when is Damian a suspect?"

"Right now, everyone is, you know that. That's how I do my job. And you can't possibly expect me to allow you to get in the way of an investigation." She had a job to do. She suddenly remembered the counterfeiting case back in the fall. She had put her instincts, her faith in Castle, over her job in that one instance but that had been different; that had been Castle himself looking, for a moment, guilty, but she knew Castle too well to believe him capable of that sort of murder. She _knew_ Castle. She did not know Damian Westlake. And unlike Castle, she didn't—couldn't—give people the benefit of the doubt or accept them on faith.

Certainly not in these circumstances. A domestic female homicide victim, a dog that hadn't barked (just like the "curious incident of the dog in the night-time," per the Sherlock Holmes story). Castle didn't see it as suspicious—wouldn't see it—but she did.

"I won't. I won't. I promise. But now can we get onto real suspects like workmen, like mystery gang members? Question away."

Kate looked away in mingled frustration, annoyance, and a twist of something like hurt. He was so… eager, so… Castle-like. But he was, she could see, already blinding himself to the simple, more straightforward solution, out of loyalty to his friend.

"Look, I promised Damian that we would get the guy that did this. Let me help you. Please."

Of course he would want to help. It was his nature to want to help people, especially his friends.

She met his eyes and knew she was going to agree. It might be against her better judgment in some ways but she was going to agree. She couldn't deny Castle the chance to be involved in this case when he had made a promise to a friend; she knew how seriously Castle took his promises.

She nodded just once and knew he understood as his expression relaxed, his eyes thanking her although he said nothing.

Oh god. She sent up a silent wish, a desperate hope, that this case would turn out to be about the gang tag, that Damian Westlake would turn out to have been entirely truthful in his declaration that he had loved his wife. That Castle's faith in his friend would turn out to be justified—and that she and Castle would not end up at odds over this.

She wasn't that lucky.

 _~To be continued…~_


	19. Chapter 18: Final Nail 2

Author's Note: The second of four chapters revolving around "The Final Nail." Expect some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 18_

The case only seemed to get worse as the standard background check into Damian Westlake came back the next day and Kate learned with another little chill that Damian had been the prime suspect in his father's murder some twenty years ago.

Another home invasion homicide. It wasn't quite specific enough to be a M.O. but it was definitely suspicious.

And worse, Castle had not mentioned it at all—and she had asked him directly yesterday evening if he had any pertinent information and he'd said he didn't. He'd withheld something this vital from her!

She understood, especially after the story Castle had told her about Edgewyck Academy, why Castle was loyal to his friend but to withhold something like being a previous suspect in another homicide…

Kate felt her temper rising, mingled in with hurt. He didn't trust her, not in this. Hadn't trusted her enough to tell her about Damian's father's murder. She focused on her anger—she couldn't deal with the hurt right now. She was at work and had a job to do.

She sent Espo a look. "Thanks, Espo."

She and Esposito had been working together for long enough that he easily understood the look and the words to mean that she wanted him to leave and he left the break room, mumbling something about going to run down more leads.

Once he was gone, Kate rounded on Castle. "Castle, it's one thing for you to look out for your friend. It's a completely different story when you hide vital information from me."

"I wasn't hiding it!" Castle protested, his voice rising to match hers. "I just didn't think it mattered."

"You didn't think it mattered that Damian was a suspect in a previous homicide," she repeated incredulously. Was he serious? He had worked beside her all this time and he could say that having been a suspect in another homicide wasn't, at the very least, relevant information, if not an outright red flag?

"I didn't _know_ he was a suspect. And since he was never arrested and that case is still unsolved, I'm guessing the cops have a lot of theories and no evidence. Like another detective I could name right about now."

Kate inwardly flinched at the lash of his words. His accusation flicked on the raw because she prided herself, always, on following the evidence. She _hated_ cops who came into a case with a preconceived idea about the solution and refused to even consider anything that didn't match their preferred theory. It might have been the most serious promise she had made herself when she had started working Homicide, that _she_ would never be one of those lazy cops. Would never be like Raglan—or as she had thought Raglan had been—of refusing to look outside his "gang violence" theory and not working on her mother's case after deeming it unsolvable.

And to have Castle, who _knew_ how much she hated lazy cops who didn't really work a case based on evidence at all, who were satisfied with doing the bare minimum to close a case, accuse her of that sort of dereliction of duty _hurt_. And angered her too.

She forcibly got a grip on her rioting emotions, lowering her voice in an attempt to calm herself. "You know, if this was anybody else, you'd be asking why I hadn't already slapped the cuffs on him.

"But it _isn't_ anyone else," he protested sharply. "And I am telling you, you are way off base on this one!"

"We agreed that you would stay out of my way on this."

"Yes, but I did not agree to stand by and let you railroad my friend—"

Railroad! The word, the implication, was the final straw and she lost her temper, her voice rising, never mind the fact that they were standing in the break room in the middle of the precinct, in full view and hearing of everyone on the floor. "Castle, you are too close to this one! You need to go home! Now!" she ordered sharply.

He stared and for a second, she saw dismay mingle in with the temper on his face and she thought he might fight with her but then he abruptly turned and left, heading straight out of the bullpen.

Kate stayed an extra moment in the break room, regulating her breathing in an attempt to cool down and get herself back under control. She hated losing her temper, hated losing control, period, and she almost never did so in the precinct of all places, but Castle had always had the ability to get under her skin. And as it was, he knew her too well, even in his own anger, not to know perfectly well how to set a fuse to her temper, his words finding all the chinks in her armor.

It was hard—harder than it had ever been before, really—but she managed to lock her usual Detective Beckett professional shield in place, pulling back all trace of her emotions. She couldn't deal with it now.

That done, she stalked out of the break room, heading immediately to the boys' desks and steadfastly ignoring the way they both scrambled to look busy, as if they hadn't just been witnesses to her and Castle's argument.

"Let's get a hold of Philip Westlake's case file. I want to find out why no arrests were made," she clipped out. "And Vicky Westlake's ex-husband, Simon Campbell, let's bring him in."

If she had thought that talking to Vicky's ex-husband—another man who might possibly have had a reason to harm Vicky—would help as in giving her a reason to turn her attention away from Damian Westlake, she was wrong. Talking to Simon Campbell only gave her reason to think that Damian had lied when he'd said that he and Vicky were happy because Vicky had, apparently, not been happy at all. Even taking into account that Simon Campbell had no reason to think well of Damian, his story that Vicky had mentioned that marrying Damian was a mistake was not a good sign. And the timing of Vicky's murder, too, appeared to point straight to Damian.

She didn't want to believe that Damian Westlake had done this—for Castle's sake—but she had to be open to the possibility that he had.

And right now, the fact remained that he had opportunity and, as far as she knew, motive. She directed Ryan and Esposito to look into the Westlakes' financial records. It was the sordid truth that solving a murder so often came down to the stark question of _cui bono_ and money was the most classic motive of all, especially when it came to family members and inheritances.

Kate left the boys to pull the financial records while she herself took home the Philip Westlake case file, which were faxed from the Puerto Rico PD, and read through it as she ate her solitary dinner in her apartment.

Philip Westlake's murder didn't appear to have been some sort of home invasion robbery gone wrong; the police noted that while a few minor trinkets and things appeared to be missing, there were much more expensive items in the house that had been left untouched.

She paused at a note written by Detective Salazar, the lead detective on the case, commenting that there was evidence that Damian and his father had had a troubled relationship, at best, had barely been on speaking terms with each other. And the stark fact that Damian had inherited every cent of his father's millions upon his father's death.

Other than that, his neighbors had stated that Philip Westlake had been an agreeable neighbor and no one could think of anyone who would have had reason to harm him.

She glared at the file as if it had personally offended her before almost shoving it away from her.

She hated this case. She hated fighting with Castle, hated knowing that this case was troubling him so much. Hated that she couldn't simply take Castle's word for Damian's character.

She was used to being the voice of reason when Castle got carried away with one of his trademark crazy theories, used to being the one to ruin his story with her logic, as he put it—but this felt different. Made her feel as if she were directly attacking the core of him, his dogged, stubborn wish to believe the best about people, his refusal to be a cynic.

He had accused her of _railroading_ his friend, as if he thought she might somehow invent the evidence to unfairly accuse his friend of murder.

She had thought, believed, that he, of all people, knew her better than that, had more faith in her than that. Castle's faith in her was being weighed against his loyalty to his old friend—and at this moment, his loyalty to his old friend came first. As the legal shorthand phrase would put it, first in time, first in right. He had known Damian longer so his loyalty to his old school friend, even if it was the product of a lonely boy building up in his mind the image of the friend who had encouraged him, outweighed even his loyalty to her, his faith in her.

He might love her—no, he _did_ love her. She didn't—couldn't—doubt that. He loved her and he trusted her, trusted her with his heart, with his daughter, with his life. She _knew_ he did.

But in this one instance, he didn't trust her—or at least, he didn't trust her enough.

She could understand that Castle, when it came to Damian Westlake, wasn't the man she knew so well but was, still, in many ways, the lonely boy he had been when he and Damian had first met. She knew how powerful memory and nostalgia could be. More than that, she knew how hard it was to see people as they really were, uncolored by emotion or past memories. She understood that Castle, when he looked at Damian Westlake, still saw him as the friend and mentor he had once been and that was affecting Castle's thoughts and his perceptions.

She understood that. She _did_. She told herself that his words and his anger earlier had not been about her or his faith in her so much as it was about him and his characteristic, unshakable loyalty in his friends, his persistent wish to believe the best about people.

She understood but that didn't quite manage to do away with her hurt, her sense of something like betrayal, that he—the one who said she was extraordinary and meant it—could seemingly doubt her so easily, question her professionalism as he had done.

It wasn't as if she wanted to believe Damian guilty; she didn't. She _hated_ the idea that Castle would be so disappointed and betrayed by such an old friend of his, someone who Castle believed in so strongly.

But she was a cop and she couldn't run an investigation based on what she wanted the solution to be.

She could only hope that Castle would understand, that after he had time to cool off and think about it, his own rational intelligence—and yes, his knowledge of her—would reassert itself.

Maybe—hopefully—tomorrow, she thought, and took herself off to her solitary bed on that thought.

* * *

Kate stalked into the precinct the next morning in a distinctly bad mood. She supposed she must be positively radiating irritation because of the way people avoided meeting her eyes as she passed, even down to the uniform in the lobby.

She was aware of it but she was in no state of mind to care. She already felt the beginnings of a headache forming, the result of stress and a lack of sleep. She had not slept well. She was annoyed at herself for not sleeping well but the fact remained that she hadn't. Had spent the better part of the night staring at her ceiling or tossing and turning, trying not to feel overly conscious of the empty other half of her bed.

She had failed. Both at sleeping and at not being very aware that Castle wasn't there. Worse, that there wasn't even the possibility that he would let himself into her apartment, as he occasionally did on the nights she spent in her apartment, coming over after Alexis had gone to bed and leaving to return to the loft before Alexis usually made it down for breakfast in the morning. (He'd once joked that she was like his teddy bear that he couldn't sleep without; she had told him only half-seriously that if he ever called her a teddy bear again, she would shoot him.)

And he hadn't called. Of course he hadn't called. But that had bothered her too. Which annoyed her all over again because, damn it, she shouldn't be so dependent on him that she found it hard to sleep simply because he hadn't called or even texted to wish her a good night. What was she, a five-year-old?

Ugh.

But as much as it annoyed her, she had to admit it was true. Last night had been the first night in months—the first night since they had gotten together—where he hadn't, at the very least, texted her (and usually called her too) before bed. Even when he'd been away last summer on his book signing tour, they had talked every night. Last night, they hadn't.

Stopping off at a coffee shop on her way into the precinct and buying her own coffee had been absurdly depressing.

Esposito, predictably, was the first person who had the nerve to approach her that morning, although it was only to tell her that the Westlakes' financial records had come in. (Ryan had taken one look at her when he had arrived and found a reason to busy himself at his own desk.)

"Good," she clipped out and made her way into the conference room and dove into going through the financial records with the boys.

Any hope that the financial records would give them a reason to focus on anyone other than Damian Westlake died quickly as it turned out that Damian had been living off of Vicky's money for the entire time of their marriage and that their pre-nup made it very clear that while divorcing would have left Damian penniless, Vicky's death had made him a wealthy man.

If this was about money, as it usually was when a wealthy person was murdered, more and more it was looking like the main person who had a reason to want Vicky dead was her husband.

On the thought, Kate pushed herself up from the conference room table and made her way into the break room to make herself another coffee.

Assuming, of course, that Castle's espresso machine hadn't also decided it was mad at her.

Predictably, with the way her luck had been going, the machine _was_ mad at her, emitting a puff of steam that nearly burned her fingers and blasted her face with heat.

Damn stupid machine. She could almost wonder if Castle had put a spell on it or something since it never seemed to work right for her when Castle wasn't around.

She tried again, only to get another face-full of steam for her efforts, although at the very least, this wasn't quite as hot as the last one had been.

She waved her hand to clear the air in front of her and then belatedly saw Castle standing in the doorway.

And sternly tamped down the automatic, unreasoning, upwelling of happiness inside her at the sight of him.

"Can I give you a hand with that?"

"I got it," she bit out instinctively.

He stepped forward anyway, lifting a hand to help her. "You just need to—you—"

She felt a surge of irritation. Oh, now he wanted to help her when he had spent yesterday undermining her at every turn?

"Castle," she snapped, "I said, I got it, okay?"

She turned away from the stupid, biased machine, deciding that she didn't want coffee right then anyway. "What are you doing here?"

Castle hesitated, looking away, and then met her eyes. "When I told Damian that the best detective in New York was working his wife's case, I meant it. And I'm… I'm sorry to have doubted you. I shouldn't have said what I did." He paused and then added, more quietly, "Aside from Alexis, there's no one in the world I trust as much as you."

She felt her irritation and her hurt dissipating with his words, the sincerity in his eyes. Even if she'd wanted to stay annoyed at him, she couldn't. He did trust her. Her expression softened and she knew he could read her emotions in her face. "I know, Castle," was all she said, very quietly.

He took another step closer to her, one hand briefly touching her waist, while his other smoothly and efficiently pushed a few buttons and manipulated the machine into working, a smooth stream of fragrant, steaming hot espresso coming out of the spout.

He handed her the mug of coffee and she took it, their fingers brushing, apology and reconciliation in one simple gesture. "I hate it when we argue."

"Me too," she admitted rather reluctantly. She might have been in the right—she had been right—and part of her wanted to be independent enough that she could just do her job, do what she thought was right, without being affected by his opinion—but it simply wasn't true. She cared about what he thought and she hated being at odds with him.

He paused and then went on, "And if you let me back, I promise I will do my best to remain objective."

She had to fight back a wince at that, knowing that his promise to be objective was going to be so severely tested. "That might be harder than you think," she told him as gently as possible.

She led Castle into the conference room and summarized the information from the financial records for him.

The lead with the gang tag painted on the back wall came up and gave Castle a flare of momentary hope but then even that lead petered out and only pointed straight back to Damian.

The more they learned about this case, the worse it looked for Damian Westlake. He'd been overheard having a big fight with Vicky the very afternoon before her death and Vicky had mentioned divorce—to say nothing of the fact that Damian's financial records made it clear that he had been keeping more than one dirty little secret.

Kate hated to see that but the evidence was impossible to ignore and nothing they learned made her at all inclined to trust Damian Westlake. She couldn't help but return to how distraught Damian had appeared on Wednesday night. He had lied unflinchingly when he had said his wife was his entire world and all Kate could think was that Damian Westlake appeared to be a masterful liar, to say nothing of a very good actor.

Which would serve him well if he were a murderer, to say nothing of being a cheating husband.

Castle didn't want to believe it, she could see, and did what he could to push back but his tone gave him away, threaded as it was with reluctant doubt, and in the end, there wasn't much he could say. For one of the first times since they'd started to work together, his ingenuity, his ability to come up with a story, failed him. (And at that moment, Kate thought that she would never be annoyed with him for spouting some far-fetched theory again because seeing him so unwilling and unable to spin a theory to fit the facts made her chest almost ache with a vague, indefinable pain.)

"There's got to be a reasonable explanation," he said lamely, but his faith had been severely shaken and for the first time, he sounded as if he were saying it mostly in an attempt to convince himself.

"Well, let's go see if we can find it," she suggested.

He followed her out of the precinct in a depressed silence.

She hated it—it was so unnatural to have Castle be so silent and still—and after a moment, she infused as much teasing as she could into her voice as she asked, "You never invited me to the Varick Club, Castle. Didn't you want to 'play' with me?"

He shot her a surprised look and she saw with a lift of her heart the spark of humor brightening his eyes, the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "That's because you deserve better than the Varick Club. And you ought to know by now that what I love best is playing with you at home in our bed."

He put the faintest emphasis on the word 'our' and, for the first time since this case had started, she felt a rush of warmth in her chest. They might be at odds over this case right now but at base, it hadn't changed anything. Their relationship was still there, still solid. It really wasn't just his bed in his bedroom, was it? It was _their_ bed in _their_ bedroom.

"Oh, I don't know, Castle. A playroom might have its merits. It would be kind of fun to get the experience of what a night out with the eligible bachelor-out-on-the-town Richard Castle is like."

He made a half-strangled sound and turned to stare at her, his eyes wide.

Yes, that had definitely distracted him. And though she'd initially just wanted to tease him out of his brooding, now that it was out there, the idea had some merit. She was rather curious to see what a one-night stand with the Richard Castle of Page Six would be like, the one-night stand she had sometimes fantasized about when reading about his exploits on Page Six before they had met for real.

"Beckett, you—are you seriously—what are you suggesting?"

She smirked at him, amused at his stammering. "You're not afraid of a little role-play, are you, Castle?"

He choked on air. "You want to role-play? What, like having me just pick you up in a bar?"

She gave him a long, deliberately thorough once-over. "Or I could pick you up."

"You can pick me up anytime you want, Beckett."

She grinned. "I'll keep that in mind. So is that a yes?"

"How could I ever say no to you? Besides, it seems fitting as the last time I use my membership before I cancel it since I'm never going to use it again. I haven't been to the Varick in more than three years," he rather abruptly added.

She suppressed a smile. He sounded so… anxious to make sure she knew that he hadn't been to the Varick since before they'd met. "Did something happen to keep you away?" she asked with feigned innocence. She was happy to tease him, happy that she could tease him about this. She knew his being a member of the Varick had nothing to do with them. She hadn't been surprised to learn that he was a member of the club; she had already figured that he must have had some place to bring his past flings to since she knew he never brought any of his flings to the loft. And a private club of the sort that the Varick obviously was would be more discreet, more the sort of place Castle would frequent, than going to a hotel that was a public place.

"Yeah. I met this woman, who became the standard by which I compare every woman I meet only to find that everyone else falls short. Maybe you know her. She's tall, gorgeous, and brilliant, and she challenges me like no one else I've ever met."

She couldn't help but laugh softly, feeling herself flush, a flock of happy butterflies suddenly appearing in her stomach. Even after all this time with him, his words could always affect her. "I might have heard of her," she joked lightly.

He laughed and she smiled, feeling a little giddy rush of pleasure at having made him laugh, even now when they were about to learn more about what tawdry secrets his old friend had been keeping from his wife.

She had made him laugh and she knew how precious it was to be made to laugh when otherwise troubled. It was what he did for her every day and she loved that now, at this moment when he was the one who was upset, she could lift his spirits, even if it was just for a moment.

They arrived at the Varick that, even from the outside, looked luxurious, discreet, and exclusive. Inside, it was even more so and so Kate wasn't surprised that the girl at the front desk was able to greet Castle by name, no doubt that was part of the personalized, exclusive service they gave to their members.

"Mr. Castle, welcome back. It's been a long time."

Kate felt Castle's glance and quirked her eyebrows at him teasingly in response, making the corners of his lips ease.

He turned back to the girl and managed a nonchalant expression. "Yes well, I've been… busy."

"We're actually here about another one of your members, Damian Westlake," Kate interjected smoothly. As amusing as Castle's discomfiture was, she wanted to get this over with, not prolong Castle's suspense. "Apparently, he would come here often, rent a playroom."

The girl hesitated, her eyes widening. "I should probably get my supervisor," she faltered.

"Callie, it's okay," Castle told her quietly, reassuringly. Kate glanced at him. So he knew the girl's name too. Kate supposed the Varick would have tried to ensure that the members became familiar with the staff to make the members feel more at home. "You can tell us. Was Damian meeting someone here?"

Callie looked away, hesitated, flushing and then paling, and Kate knew what she was about to say before she swallowed and admitted, very quietly, "He was meeting me."

Castle flinched almost imperceptibly at this confirmation of Damian's faithlessness and Kate took point, making her voice as mild and unthreatening as possible. "Callie, would you mind coming down to the station with us so we can talk more?"

The girl's eyes widened and then she nodded with visible resignation. "I'll go get my supervisor."

The supervisor, too, greeted Castle with jovial pleasure that Castle was not at all able to match, although the supervisor's geniality vanished abruptly the moment Kate introduced herself and said they wanted to take Callie down to the station to talk to her.

Kate did not explain why; she didn't know but she figured that Callie's having been involved with a member would not be approved and she wasn't in the business of getting an innocent dupe like Callie apparently was in trouble at her job. Predictably, the supervisor agreed, somewhat reluctantly, but agreed. He might not be happy about it but the last thing he would want was for Kate to return with a warrant so places like this usually made a point of cooperating to the extent they could without otherwise compromising their members' privacy.

Castle was silent and glum the entire ride back to the precinct and Kate decided she hated Damian Westlake for the way his lies and secrets were shaking the foundations of Castle's beliefs in Damian's character. She herself was too much of a cynic to be entirely surprised but she hated the disillusionment darkening Castle's eyes, putting such bleakness in his expression.

She hated it but she did her job, although she felt less satisfaction about doing it than she ever had before, had never been less pleased at the way the evidence was piling up against their prime suspect.

And she had never hated doing her duty more than she did when she arrested Damian Westlake for his wife's murder.

She was doing her job, doing what she had to do, but that didn't make it much easier to see the look on Castle's face.

Another nearly sleepless night alone in her apartment didn't help. The expression on Castle's face as he'd watched Damian being led off to the holding cells lingered in her mind, haunting her like the Ghost of Christmas Future, and she rather felt as if her thoughts were about as cheerful as the future that particular ghost had shown Scrooge. She felt irrationally guilty about putting that look on Castle's face, felt as if she had been the one to betray his trust as much as Damian Westlake had.

She hadn't betrayed Castle, she told herself, and Castle himself didn't blame her. He had told her so, even as he told her bleakly that he thought he wanted to be alone that night. He knew—and she knew he knew—that she was only doing her job, but having to hurt Castle in order to do her job was a high price to pay.

The next day didn't get any better.

Working without him at her side, knowing that they were essentially working at cross-purposes, whether it was on Vicky Westlake's murder or Philip Westlake's (since Castle had declared with a confidence that twisted at her heart that he would solve it), had her feeling isolated, even with the boys right there, missing Castle's presence beside her as if it were an amputated limb. It just… wasn't right, to be running down leads and looking into a suspect without Castle beside her, having to work only with the boys again. She and the boys had always been an efficient, well-oiled machine—but she could tell that even the boys felt Castle's absence. It wasn't the same without him.

But then, when they got evidence that pointed to someone other than Damian as Vicky Westlake's killer, she thought she finally had a reason to call him, could cheer him up, and was just about to press his name on her contacts list when she heard the sound of the elevator, the door opening, and she looked up and saw him, as if he'd been conjured by just the thought of him.

He looked… better, more like himself.

"I was hoping you'd still be here," he told her as he stepped off the elevator.

"I was just about to call you," she said, her words almost overlapping with his, feeling a smile curve her lips for what felt like the first time in days. Her heart lifted and somehow, suddenly, just like that, she felt whole again, as if a last puzzle piece had slotted into place.

"I think I know who the killer is." They blurted the words out in unison, their eyes meeting, and she didn't try to hide her wide smile, a smile that he returned.

He was here, working with her, and at that moment, all was right in her world again.

"You solved Philip Westlake's case?" she asked and her question overlapped neatly with his, "You found out who killed Vicky?"

His eyes brightened as he made a go-ahead gesture with his hand. "You go first, Beckett."

"I think it was Amber Patinelli."

He blinked. "Amber… Vicky's employee? Why?"

"That's what we were wondering but it turns out that she and Simon Campbell are involved."

"I thought Simon said he and Vicky had talked about reconciling…"

"I think that's the motive. Amber found out that Vicky wanted to reconcile with Simon…"

"And she decided she didn't want to lose Simon," he finished for her and their eyes met and held for a moment.

She felt an entirely inappropriate rush of pleasure. It was just so _good_ to be talking to Castle again, to be able to theorize over evidence with him, have him finishing her sentences again.

"Talk about a fatal love triangle," Castle commented and this time, she did smile. It was such a Castle-like thing to say.

She forced herself to sober up. "So I told you my story. Now it's your turn. Who do you think killed Philip Westlake?"

"Not Damian," Castle answered quickly. "But another old classmate of ours at Edgewyck, Michael Rutherford, who had a grudge against Damian. I talked to Detective Salazar…"

"The lead detective on Philip Westlake's case," she remembered. "I thought he retired."

Castle smiled faintly. "He did but it turned out he retired and moved to New York."

She couldn't help but laugh slightly. "Wow, small world."

"Yeah. Someone described seeing someone loitering outside the Westlakes' home that night and the sketch matched Michael Rutherford, who had every reason not to like Damian. Detective Salazar agreed that it makes sense and told me to contact him again if I managed to get solid confirmation."

"We'll contact the Puerto Rico PD in the morning then," she told him. "With a little luck, we'll manage to close two cases instead of just one." Trust Castle to take home the case file of a murder almost 20 years old and manage to solve it. She was suddenly almost absurdly proud of him. She, of all people, knew how much harder it became to solve cases the more time had passed and now Castle, out of sheer stubbornness and unwillingness to lose faith in his friend, had come up with a new plausible lead to finally close an old, unsolved case.

And if Castle did manage to solve Philip Westlake's case after all this time, she couldn't help but think that maybe, with his help, they really could solve her mother's case once and for all too.

They heard the sound of the elevator and they both glanced up to see Ryan and Esposito escorting Simon Campbell and Amber Patinelli in.

Kate looked back at Castle. "You want to come with me in talking to them, partner?"

His answer was to reach over and squeeze her hand for just a moment. "I wouldn't miss it, partner."

Partners—because that was what they were. Still. Always.

And later, after she finished the paperwork to process Amber Patinelli's arrest, they went home to the loft and that night, for the first time since she'd heard the name Damian Westlake, she was able to sleep, soundly, with his arm around her, the solid warmth of his body bracketing hers.

 _~To be continued…~_

A/N 2: Even in canon, there was no way Beckett wouldn't have brought up Castle being a member of the Varick Club again so of course she had to tease him about it here.


	20. Chapter 19: Final Nail 3

Disclaimer: As always, "Castle" doesn't belong to me.

Author's Note: The third of 4 chapters revolving around "The Final Nail." This chapter serves to fill in the blanks, as it were, in the episode because there's so much we didn't see that I, for one, was curious about.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 19_

Kate was pulled to a groggy consciousness when her alarm went off the next morning and she reached over to turn the alarm off before automatically turning towards Castle. Or the empty half of the bed where Castle should have been.

She ran a hand down her face to scrub the sleep out of her eyes. She really must have been tired not to wake up at all whenever he had gotten out of bed and it was unusual for him to awaken before her. Admittedly, not sleeping well for the last few nights had definitely taken it out of her so she'd fallen asleep almost the moment her head had hit her pillow last night.

It was Valentine's Day, she remembered a little belatedly.

She pushed herself up out of bed and made quick work of showering and getting dressed. She didn't know where Castle had gone so early in the morning but she assumed it must have something to do with Valentine's Day and found herself smiling to herself as she slipped her necklace with her mom's ring on it over her head.

Even after the last few days that had upset him so much, she should have known he would already have made his plans to make the day special. (Knowing Castle, he had probably started planning for Valentine's Day weeks ago.) He was, as he liked to joke, a man of occasion, was so good at making even normal days seem special so for actual holidays, he naturally went all out. He had been as excited as a child at Christmas time and only his understanding when she'd explained to him why she and her dad didn't really celebrate Christmas anymore had somewhat dampened his enthusiasm.

She smelled it the moment she stepped out of their bedroom and into his office and she hurried out towards the kitchen, anticipation and happiness bubbling up inside her and quickening her steps.

He was still in the t-shirt and sweats he'd worn to bed but had donned a red apron reading _Kiss the Cook_ and was standing at the stove, transferring a pancake onto a plate.

He looked up and smiled. "Good morning, Beckett."

She smiled back, suddenly flashing back to the first time he had made strawberry happy-face pancakes for her—the morning she had realized she was in love with him. "Good morning."

He looked… happy, his eyes and expression as bright as they ever were, and she realized with a surge of gratitude and joy just how relieved he was now that the Vicky Westlake case was closed, his friend exonerated, and generally cleared of suspicion from Philip Westlake's murder as well. She still couldn't like Damian but she was so glad for Castle's sake that he had turned out to be innocent of murder.

And even better that he'd been cleared in time for their first Valentine's Day together.

She moved around the counter to his side, sliding her arm around his waist and rose up on her toes to kiss him. (After all, his apron had told her to, she thought with a small inward grin.)

He turned away from the stove, putting down the spatula so he could wrap both arms around her waist, keeping her in place against him and kissing her rather more thoroughly. "Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart," he murmured as he drew back.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Rick." She felt warmth glow in her heart. _Sweetheart._ He'd used it again. He didn't use endearments with her; if anything, his using her first name was probably the closest he came to using an endearment. And she herself had never thought she really liked endearments. Her dad was the only person who really used endearments with her anymore—well, her dad and Martha, but Martha used endearments generously. She wouldn't want Castle to use an endearment for her in public or even when anyone else was around but she found that, when it was just the two of them, she rather liked it.

She drew back just enough to look at him although she stayed within the circle of his arms. "You're making strawberry happy-face pancakes. Thank you."

He made a face of mock disapproval. "Wrong, Beckett. These are not strawberry happy-face pancakes."

She looked pointedly at the small stack of pancakes resting next to the bowl of sliced strawberries. "They're not?"

He huffed. "It's Valentine's Day so these are strawberry _heart_ pancakes."

Silly, adorable man.

"Of course they are."

He bent and dropped another quick kiss on her nose. "And they're not done yet so go drink your coffee and then go and wake up Alexis while I finish getting them ready."

She suppressed a laugh. "You telling me what to do, Castle?"

He pretended to think about it. "Yes. At least while I'm making breakfast."

She gave in to her laugh. "Well, I suppose since it's a special occasion, I won't fight with you about it."

"Thank you. That's very gracious of you," he said with exaggerated gratitude.

She bussed him on the chin and then did what she'd been told, settling into her usual seat at the table to drink her coffee, that was, as usual, prepared just the way she liked it.

He busied himself making another pancake and she sat back and just enjoyed watching him. She still teased him for creepy staring but at times like this, she entirely understood why he enjoyed watching her. She loved watching him in the kitchen, liked seeing the play of muscles in his arms, liked the confidence and certainty in the movements of his hands as he flipped the pancake over and then in another minute or two, transferred the completed pancake onto the stack and then poured out more batter.

She just… loved him. This dear, generous, compassionate, irritating, funny man. This man who loved so deeply, so completely, it amazed her and humbled her. This man, who had been betrayed and disillusioned but who still persisted in believing the best about people, who refused to be a cynic.

She suddenly remembered something she'd read once years ago: "Anyone can slay a dragon, but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero."* She hadn't quite understood it then but now, she did. It was an odd, rather counter-intuitive sort of heroism but heroism it was. In a job where she consistently saw people at their worst, learned people's guilty secrets, she understood now the real value and importance of people like Castle, who still refused to become cynical and by their sheer belief, their capacity for optimism in human nature, somehow made those around them more hopeful, happier. People like Castle were what convinced people like her that the world—humanity—had good in it that was worth fighting for and preserving. She had seen what happened when cops lost that belief, when they became too disillusioned and cynical and forgot that there were still innocents to protect; they were the cops who went bad, the ones who corrupted the system.

She thought about the Valentine's Day gift she had decided to give him, the idea for which she'd gotten from what he had said when he'd explained just why he believed in Damian so strongly. He would understand its significance, she thought. But then again he was a writer, he understood symbolism and subtext, and perhaps most importantly, he knew her.

She finished her first coffee and then prepared another for herself and then made one for him too, placing them both at their usual places at the table.

"I'll go up and get Alexis."

She knocked on Alexis's door and then opened it just enough to poke her head in when she heard Alexis say, "Come in."

Alexis was still in her pajamas, her clothes for the day laid out on her bed, and she turned to give Kate a smile. "Morning, Kate."

"Good morning. Your dad made pancakes so hurry down before they get cold."

Alexis laughed softly. "Of course he did. I'll be down in a minute, Kate."

"All right."

Kate closed Alexis's door softly. She glanced at Martha's closed door but didn't try to disturb the older woman. As Kate knew by now, Martha was generally not an early riser; she kept to her own schedule and she and Castle both seemed to prefer it that way.

She made her way back downstairs and sat back down in her seat. "Alexis is on her way."

"Oh good, because my masterpiece pancakes are just about ready."

His masterpiece pancakes—on another day, in just about any other context, she would have said something snarky about his ego but she remembered his strawberry happy-face pancakes and they really had been masterpieces. Pancakes had never been her favorite breakfast food; even when her mom had given her the option of choosing what she wanted for breakfast on their lazy Sunday mornings, she had usually asked for waffles or omelets or eggs and bacon. But Castle's pancakes—well, she had changed her opinion about where pancakes ranked on the list of her preferred breakfast foods.

Castle poured a glass of orange juice and came over to set it at Alexis's spot, pausing to drop a kiss on her hair.

He returned to the kitchen island and busied himself preparing his strawberry heart pancakes, arranging the strawberries on the pancakes with a look of concentration on his face that Kate found both adorable and endearing. It was such a little thing really, to be decorating their food, but even so, Castle focused on it as if he were a contestant on _Kitchen Wars_ and was going to be judged on the aesthetic presentation of his pancakes.

Alexis came running lightly down the stairs and Castle turned away from the island just in time to catch her as she threw herself at him.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Dad."

"Happy Valentine's Day, pumpkin."

Alexis grinned up at her father and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "You made your strawberry heart pancakes. Thank you."

Alexis knew about them too? "I thought strawberry happy face pancakes were the special ones," Kate spoke up.

Castle threw her a look of exaggerated reproach. "Oh, ye of little faith. Do you really think I have so little creativity that I would limit myself to happy faces for my culinary artwork?"

Alexis laughed and slipped into her seat. "Silly Dad. Kate doesn't know just how big of a geek you can be." She turned to Kate. "Strawberry happy-face pancakes are what he makes for normal days or for my birthday as a special treat but for holidays, he usually switches it up to make different designs. Hearts for Valentine's Day; he dyed strawberries green and made four-leaf clovers on pancakes for St. Patrick's Day once." Alexis wrinkled her nose. "But those ended up looking kinda gross so I told him not to. And when he makes pancakes for Christmas, he varies between making Christmas trees or snowmen."

Of course he did. That sounded just like Castle.

Kate threw Castle a look of mock regret. "I'm sorry for doubting your creative abilities, oh master pancake decorator."

He huffed. "You should be."

He came over to the table, a plate in each hand, and set one down in front of Alexis and then another in front of Kate. And yes, each pancake was decorated with a heart made out of strawberries and outlined with whip cream, looking like an edible valentine. She turned her face up to smile at him and he bent and kissed her, lingering rather more than he usually did when Alexis was around.

Alexis groaned. "Really, guys?"

Castle lifted his head to smirk at Alexis. "It's Valentine's Day, Alexis. Kissing is mandatory."

The girl gave him a sudden mischievous grin that made her look much like her father. "I'll remember that when I see Ashley today."

Castle scowled. "I changed my mind. Kissing is very optional for anyone younger than 25."

Alexis laughed. "Too late for take-backs now, Dad. You said it first."

Castle made a disgruntled face at her and Kate laughed at the look on his face, lifting up her hand to curl around the back of his neck, bringing his head down so she could kiss his cheek comfortingly. "Don't pout, Castle."

Predictably, he only pouted more, still didn't look entirely pleased when he returned to the table with his own plate and the stack of remaining pancakes.

She reached out to squeeze his knee briefly beneath the table, to distract him, making his expression clear as he turned to smile at her. "Thanks for the pancakes, Castle." It wasn't really what she meant but it would do.

His eyes brightened as he gave her a look that warmed her heart clear through but all he said was, "Eat up, Beckett."

She did, making a point of moaning a little at the first bite of the pancake, that was quite as good as she remembered. (What? She knew what hearing her moan did to him. And there was nothing that said she couldn't give him another reason to anticipate tonight.) She finished her first pancake in a matter of minutes and helped herself to a second before looking up to grin at him. "You know something, Castle? I changed my mind. I'm not only keeping you around for the coffee; I'm keeping you around for your pancakes too."

He inclined his head to her with mock gravity. "Why, thank you, Beckett, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

She smirked at him while Alexis laughed.

The rest of breakfast passed quickly as Castle asked Alexis about what her plans were with Ashley and reminded her to be home by 10, to which Alexis gave him a look. "Dad, it's a weeknight and Valentine's Day or no, I'll still have homework to do so I'll be home before 9."

Castle gave her an approving, proud look but said jokingly, "You are a freakish child, Alexis. Who ever heard of a teenager coming home earlier than her curfew?"

Alexis made a face at him. "I know; I'm a huge disappointment."

Kate suppressed a smile. This sort of exchange between Castle and Alexis was a running joke between them.

Castle pretended to sigh. "I keep trying to corrupt you and I keep failing."

Alexis smirked. "That's because I know better than to listen to you, Dad. Gram's told me too much about what you were like when you were growing up."

"Gram talks too much," Castle grumbled. "Remind me to cut off her allowance."

Alexis giggled. "I'm telling her you said that."

Castle grimaced at her before adding, more seriously, "Anyway, Alexis, Beckett and I have dinner reservations at 7:30 so we'll still be out when you get home but I talked to Gram already and she'll be home tonight. But you know you can call if you need anything."

Alexis smiled. "I'll be fine, Dad. You and Kate have fun tonight. Don't worry about me."

"Enjoy your date with Ashley," Kate spoke up.

"But don't enjoy it too much," Castle inserted, only half-teasingly.

Alexis laughed and got up to kiss Castle's cheek and then gave Kate a quick hug. "I will. I need to finish getting ready for school. Thanks for breakfast, Dad."

She vanished up the stairs while Kate shooed Castle off to shower and change while she took care of cleaning up the breakfast things.

She was just finishing up when Alexis returned downstairs, her backpack in one hand and the bag with Ashley's gift in it in the other.

Castle emerged in time to see Alexis off for school and then Kate and Castle followed almost on her heels to head to the precinct.

"I've been wondering," Castle began as they walked into the bullpen, "me being pretty sure that Michael Rutherford killed Damian's father is one thing but it's been almost 20 years since then. How are we supposed to prove it?"

"That's up to the Puerto Rico PD," she told him. "We don't know exactly what physical evidence they have; they only managed to send us the paperwork on the case, after all. I'll call them and find out. Having a name to track down will also help."

He nodded. "That's true."

She paused. "Someone needs to tell Damian that we solved his wife's case and why she was murdered. Do you want to do it?" She tried for a rather wan smile. "Somehow I don't think Damian would be glad to see me again."

"I'll tell him but… I think I'll wait a little while. See what the Puerto Rico PD can find out. I want to have something a little more definite to tell him about his father's case too." He sobered and then added, "He hasn't known who killed his father for almost 20 years. He might not have gotten along with his father but he deserves to know."

So like Castle, to be worrying over Damian's peace of mind. Even as disillusioned over Damian's virtues as he had become, reluctantly accepting that Damian was a liar, a thief, and a cheating husband, he was still concerned for Damian.

Kate thought about the performance Damian had put on to seem devastated over Vicky's death, the way his voice had cracked with emotion, when all the while he had known that Vicky had wanted to divorce him.

 _You really think I'm that cold,_ he had asked her.

Yes, she still thought Damian was that cold. He might not have killed his wife but she still saw him as essentially self-centered, caring more about his own comfort than he did anything else, a spoiled rich kid who had grown up to be a spoiled man, as Simon Campbell had put it. Spending Vicky's money so freely while at the same time cheating on her and telling Callie he loved her.

But Castle was still in spite of everything loyal to Damian, believed in Damian and Kate could only think that Castle's belief in Damian, as with most beliefs taken on faith, revealed more about the believer than it did about the thing or person being believed in.

And Castle's persistent wish to believe the best about people, even in the face of past betrayal and disappointment and disillusionment, was one of the things she loved best about him.

She was a cynic, a skeptic, both by natural inclination and by training, but she knew it was good for her to be around him. _He_ was good for her. He had taught her to hope, made her believe in the possibility of justice, kept her from giving up in the times when she felt it was useless because, as Captain Montgomery liked to say, for cops, there was never a final victory, only a ceaseless battle. It was true but it was not a philosophy of hope, was too likely to lead to apathy instead, because what was the point of fighting a battle one could never hope to win?

Castle was the one who kept her from drowning.

"All right," she agreed quietly. "I can understand that."

His expression softened and he briefly reached out to touch her hand. "I know you can, Beckett."

She called the Puerto Rico PD to talk to the detective she had contacted earlier to get the Philip Westlake file in the first place, explaining to him what Castle had told her about Michael Rutherford and his past with Damian.

Afterwards, she called up the best sketch artist the NYPD had so he could make a sketch based on Michael Rutherford's old yearbook picture to roughly approximate what Michael Rutherford might look like 20 years later and had the finished sketch faxed to the Puerto Rico PD.

All that done, she turned to Castle. She hated to do this but she didn't want him to get his hopes up unreasonably only to be disappointed later. "You realize it might be nearly impossible to find Michael Rutherford after so many years," she pointed out gently. "Even if the Puerto Rico PD manages to find some sort of confirmation, that's a long way away from being able to make an arrest."

He sighed. "I know, Beckett. I don't expect miracles. I just… want to prove that Damian had nothing to do with the murder."

"You did, Castle. You proved that Damian didn't kill his wife and with you recognizing the sketch of Michael Rutherford, you gave the police a new suspect they couldn't have known about before. It's a good, solid lead, Castle, and it shifts suspicion from Damian." She paused and added, "Whatever else, Castle, you did some great police work on both these cases."

His eyes brightened, a smile curving his lips. "I learned from the best." He paused and then deadpanned, "I'm speaking, of course, about Esposito and Ryan."

She flicked a pencil at him teasingly. "Shut up, Castle, before you make me rethink giving you a Valentine's Day gift."

He mimed zipping his lips shut, giving her one of his patented innocent expressions, and she laughed—silly, adorable man—before turning her attention to writing up the report on the Victoria Westlake case.

She hadn't been working long before she was interrupted by her phone ringing. It was the Puerto Rico PD giving her an update. She thanked the detective before hanging up and then turned to face Castle, who had also sat bolt upright when he recognized the name of the Puerto Rico detective who'd been assigned to work on the case since Detective Salazar's retirement.

"Well, what did he say?" Castle blurted out, barely waiting for her to hang up the phone.

"He looked up flight records into and out of Puerto Rico from a couple days before and after Philip Westlake's murder and got confirmation that Michael Rutherford did fly into Puerto Rico from New York two days before the murder and then flew from Puerto Rico to Los Angeles the day after the murder."

Castle let out his breath. "So he did kill Damian's father. I knew he was a bad guy but I didn't think he was a cold-blooded killer."

"It's circumstantial evidence right now, Castle," she cautioned. "All we know is that someone by that name was in Puerto Rico at the time. But the detective said that there was a cigarette butt left at the scene and they ran DNA on it so if they find Michael Rutherford, they can make a comparison."

Castle slumped back in his chair. " _If_ they find Michael Rutherford. That's a pretty big if. He could be anywhere after all this time."

"I know," she agreed gently. "But the detective contacted the LAPD since that's the latest lead on his whereabouts. He was a native New Yorker so he's probably more comfortable in an urban area and LA is as urban as you get outside of New York. With luck, he decided to stay in LA." She didn't mention that it was still looking for a needle in an enormous haystack, not helped by the fact that Michael Rutherford was not exactly an uncommon name. If he'd had a name like a Dickens character—or a Castle character—their chances would be better. She managed a small, encouraging smile for Castle. "People do tend to settle in places once they're there and southern California is a popular place to live."

Castle brightened up, his natural optimism coming to the fore. "You're right, Beckett. He probably still is in the area."

"The detective left my name and number with the LAPD so if they manage to find Michael Rutherford, they'll contact me so we'll find out about it immediately."

"If they find him, it'll be quite a story. Three police departments all around the country cooperating to solve a 20-year-old case. It could be written about for law enforcement magazines as proof of the dedication of cops."

She smiled. "The dedication of cops—and a writer."

"Oh, I'd never forget about the writer," he quipped.

She grinned at him and then sobered. "Do you want to go tell Damian?"

He thought about it and then shook his head. "I'll wait a little while longer. Might as well give the LAPD a little time to do their work. I'll wait until later this afternoon and then go talk to Damian."

"Okay."

She spent the rest of the morning finishing her case report on the Victoria Westlake case. The boys reported that Amber Patinelli had been transferred to Central Booking while the DA reviewed the case.

It was getting towards the end of her shift that afternoon when her phone rang.

It was the LAPD and she stiffened, feeling a chill settle inside her, her heart abruptly plummeting, as she listened to the LA detective's story, the real solution to Philip Westlake's murder. She gave him her email address and thanked him mechanically before she hung up.

She turned to look at Castle, who was standing over by the boys' desks as he and Ryan teased Esposito about what he had planned for Valentine's Day with Lanie tonight.

As she watched, Castle laughed at something Ryan said and Kate felt her heart twist. Oh god. This was going to hurt him. And it would be all the worse because Castle had really believed that he'd been able to prove Damian innocent of both murders, his faith in his old friend vindicated.

For a split second, she considered not telling Castle immediately, letting him have this evening, but discarded that idea immediately. Putting it off wouldn't change anything, even if she were at all inclined to give Damian Westlake another day of freedom, which she wasn't. And Castle wouldn't thank her for keeping this from him for another day. She couldn't shield him from this; all she could do was be there for him in the hope of somehow cushioning the blow and then help pick up the pieces afterwards.

She only waited the few minutes until she saw that the LA detective had emailed her, as he'd said he would, a copy of Michael Rutherford's confession and he had attached, she saw, a scanned copy of what looked to be a hand-drawn map of the Westlake house in Puerto Rico.

"Castle."

He turned immediately, his smile automatically fading from his lips just at the tone of her voice, and he returned to stand beside her desk immediately. "Beckett, what's up?"

She stood up, pausing just to grab the copy of Michael Rutherford's confession and the map from the printer, before she met his eyes. "I need to tell you something."

She led him into the conference room, closing the door, and then, after a moment, drawing the blinds closed too.

"Beckett, what is it? You're beginning to scare me."

"Sit down, Castle."

He did and she sat down beside him and then took his hand in her own. "Castle, the call I just got was from the LAPD."

He sucked in his breath. "They found him?"

"Yes, they did. He's been arrested." She tightened her grip on his hand. "He confessed. The detective just emailed me a copy of his confession and… and you should read it." She chickened out. Her voice, her heart, all failed her at the thought of telling him aloud of Damian's guilt. After the last days of being at odds with Castle, of arguing with him over this, she found she couldn't be the one to tell him that, after all, she had been right and he had been wrong. She had never hated being proven right more.

She slid the papers over to him and watched, her heart in her throat, as he began to read the damning confession.

"No. It can't be true." His grip on her hand tightened convulsively and then he abruptly released her and pushed himself almost violently to his feet, turning away as one hand came up to rub his face.

He stood there, his back to her, with tension in every line of his form as she watched in silent compassion, for a long few minutes and then he let out a shuddering breath before he turned, moving very slowly, and sat down again.

And Kate had to stifle a gasp at the look on his face. He was pale, his eyes and his expression bleak, but what really shocked her was the sudden thought that he looked… old. He looked as if he had aged years in the space of just a few minutes. She knew, of course, that Castle was almost 10 years older than her but it didn't matter and she never thought of Castle as being old in any sense anyway. He was usually so childish—her silly overgrown man-child of a partner. But now, for the first time since they'd met, she thought that he looked his age and then some. And it made her entire chest hurt with an almost physical pain to see it.

He read through Michael Rutherford's confession again, more slowly this time, she could see, and then looked at the copy of the hand-drawn map and she saw him flinch as if he'd been sucker-punched.

"It's his handwriting," he mumbled in a voice that wasn't his own. "I recognize it."

More confirmation, as if they'd needed it, that Damian Westlake had had his own father killed.

He shut his eyes and then opened them and finally looked up at her. "What happens now?" he asked, his voice still sounding strange.

"I need to call Detective Salazar and then get a warrant for Damian's arrest and arrange for uniforms to pick him up," she said as gently as she could.

Castle straightened up. "I'm going too."

She put her hand on his arm. "Castle, you… you don't have to. Let the police handle it."

He squeezed her hand briefly. "No, Beckett. I—I need to talk to him myself. He's my friend—" he broke off, his expression abruptly twisting, before he controlled his expression and continued on, "he was my friend and I—I need to look him in the eye myself."

"Okay," she agreed softly. "I'll come with you." She didn't want him confronting a killer alone, even if that killer was an old friend of his.

He shook his head sharply. "No. I—I want to talk to him alone."

She didn't see it often since he was normally easygoing but she recognized that Castle had made up his mind and wouldn't be budged. And she was reminded, again, that somehow, in Castle, she had someone who was strong enough, stubborn enough, to hold his ground against her. Castle wasn't obvious about his strength of character or the force of his will but she knew him well enough now to recognize it when his latent stubbornness came out.

She recognized it but she had to try anyway. "Castle, are you sure… he's a…" she trailed off, couldn't bring herself to say in so many words that Damian was a killer. She remembered what both Captain Montgomery and Royce had told her years ago, that animals were most dangerous when they'd been cornered. And Damian had gotten away with murder for almost 20 years, must be feeling very secure now. How would he react to being confronted with his crime now?

Something flickered across Castle's face. "He won't hurt me. He's my fr—" he cut off the word, wincing, and then after a moment, finished with an edge in his tone, "he won't do his own dirty work."

His tone made her inwardly flinch, her heart hurting for him. "Okay."

His expression softened just a little as he met her eyes. "I need to talk to him alone… but wait outside for me?"

She nodded. "I'll do whatever you need."

She suddenly remembered what he had said to her during the Coonan case. _I will do anything that you need, including nothing, if that's what you want._

He had cared about her for so long now, had done so much for her, and now it was her turn to care about him.

He squeezed her hand, the bleakness in his eyes receding a little as he looked at her. "I know, Beckett," he murmured and for a fleeting second, she thought things might not be so bad, not if she could comfort him the way he could her.

He was resilient, she knew. He was strong enough to bear the weight of the world; he would recover from this disillusionment and betrayal. But until he had, until he was able to pick himself up again, she would support him. Try to be as much of a source of strength and of comfort for him as he was for her.

 _~To be continued…*_

 _A/N 2: The quote Beckett thinks of about it taking a hero to love the world every day is from a story by Brian Andreas that I recently read and decided it suited Castle perfectly. Next chapter will be dealing with the rest of Castle and Beckett's Valentine's Day._

 _Thank you, everyone, for reading! I'd love to know what you all think._


	21. Chapter 20: Final Nail 4

Author's Note: The last of the four chapters based on "The Final Nail" and Castle and Beckett's Valentine's Day. Fair warning that this is a very, very long chapter so feel free to take more than one sitting to read it.

Bonus points for anyone who spots the "West Wing" reference in this chapter.

* * *

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 20_

Kate waited outside the Westlake brownstone while Castle went in to talk to Damian. It had taken a little while for Kate to get the warrant for Damian's arrest and to contact Detective Salazar, who immediately said he wanted to be there for the arrest.

The squad cars pulled up and she went to meet Detective Salazar and the officers, introducing herself to Detective Salazar since until then they had only spoken on the phone.

Salazar shook her hand and then nodded his head towards the brownstone. "Is Westlake inside?"

"Yes, Castle's talking to him right now."

"I appreciate the time Mr. Castle took to look into this old case; I didn't think anyone besides me cared that it was still an open case."

She managed to stretch her lips a little into what was the closest approximation of a faint smile she could manage. "I'll tell him."

He nodded and turned away, joining the uniforms on the front steps.

Kate stayed where she was, watching as Castle emerged from the front door, his shoulders slumped slightly, the usual bounce entirely absent from his steps. (She would always have said it was silly to claim to be able to read a person's mood from their footsteps but she swore she could recognize Castle's mood, at least, in general, from his walk.)

He joined her on the sidewalk and she reached out to slip her hand into his. He gripped her hand as if it were a lifeline as he paused, turning to watch as Damian Westlake was ushered into the back of the squad car.

"'Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.' F. Scott Fitzgerald said that," she said quietly.

He turned to look at her and for the first time, a literary reference failed to elicit even the faintest spark in his eyes. "Then it must've been Ernest Hemingway who said, 'man, I sure could use a drink right about now.'"

She tightened her grip on his hand as they started to walk, moving in close so their arms brushed with every step. "You want a drink now or can it wait until dinner?"

His gaze had been fixed morosely on the sidewalk but that got him to look up at her, his expression lightening just a little. "Don't you want to change, get ready?"

Of course she wanted to but he mattered more. "We've got some time," she said instead and then added, with as much teasing as she could muster, "Why, do you think I'll need that much time to make myself pretty enough for you?"

That succeeded in drawing a brief chuckle from him, surprising even him from the look in his eyes. "You'd be gorgeous if you were wearing a burlap sack."

"Mm, I'm fresh out of burlap sacks. Will a regular dress do?"

"I love seeing you wear dresses."

"Too bad for you that I never wear dresses for work unless it's undercover."

"The outfit you changed into when you came into the Chinatown gambling den to save me was hot too."

She choked on a laugh. She was never living that down. "That's not happening again so forget it, Castle."

"Ah well, it wouldn't be appropriate for the restaurant tonight anyway," he said with something like his usual manner but then his expression abruptly changed, darkened, as something brought back the memory of Damian.

She thought back—and remembered having to tell John Allen's wife why he had ended up killed and what she had said to Castle. _It's hard when everything you thought you knew turns out to be a lie._

"Do you want that drink now?" she asked gently.

"It can wait until dinner."

"If you're sure…"

"I'm sure, Beckett." He managed a smile that never quite reached his eyes. "After all, we have a date to get ready for."

She returned his smile although she kept a careful eye on him. "That we do."

They had arrived back at her car and he brushed his lips against her cheek. "I'll pick you up at 7, okay?"

"I can drop you off at the loft."

"I'll take a cab, Beckett. The loft is in the opposite direction from your place from here."

Which was true but… She hesitated and then blurted out, "Hey, Castle?"

He paused, turning to look at her. "Yeah?"

"I'm sorry about Damian," she said, rather lamely. She was, but what she meant but didn't quite know how to express, was that she was concerned about him. Didn't want to leave him right now, even if it was just for an hour and half or so before he would be picking her up again. But then again, maybe he needed the solitude, wanted to lick his wounds in private, the way she generally tended to do. She didn't know and that was bothering her too.

He sighed but then he straightened his shoulders, his expression becoming smoothly blank. "I'm fine, Beckett. It was like you said. The Damian I thought I knew was a character I made up in my head and I didn't really know him at all."

"Okay. I'll see you at 7," was all she could say.

He gave her a faint smile. "See you at 7."

She watched as he hailed a cab before she got into her own car, sighing a little. It might all be true that Castle hadn't really known Damian at all but she knew from experience that it didn't help much when coming to terms with being disillusioned by a friend.

And Royce hadn't been shown to be a cold-blooded killer. Damian Westlake, on the other hand, had committed patricide. He might not have committed uxoricide but even there, Kate could easily believe that he was capable of it.

Once back at her apartment, she showered and dressed herself carefully, donning the minimalist underwear and extremely seductive lingerie she had bought before slipping into the new dress she had also bought just for today.

The dress was a dark blue, just a few shades darker than the color of Castle's eyes, and flowed over the outline of her figure like a smooth caress before ending just above her knees. Surveying herself in the mirror, Kate felt reasonably certain that at the very least, she looked good enough to distract Castle from his brooding for a little while.

She got out her coat and her clutch and then pulled out the box that had Castle's gift in it so it would be easily accessible.

She had just finished when she heard his knock and felt a flutter of anticipation that for the moment distracted her from her concern over Castle's mood. It was Valentine's Day and she had a date with a handsome, charming man who loved her and whom she loved.

His eyes widened, his jaw going slightly slack, as his eyes wandered up and down her body. "Kate, you look…" He gave her another lingering perusal and she felt his gaze like a touch, her entire body warming in response.

He never finished his sentence.

He looked very good himself. He always did when he was dressed up and today was no exception, in a nice suit and a dark red shirt that emphasized the color of his eyes, making them seem brighter and bluer than usual. Looking at him, she felt a visceral tug in her belly, a rush of physical attraction so strong her mouth felt dry.

"Hi," was all she managed to say, her voice sounding rather breathless even to her own ears.

He blinked and she could almost see him scrambling for coherence and she felt a thrill go through her, a giddy rush of exhilaration and humility and feminine power, at being able to affect him like this, to be able to make him lose his train of thought so completely.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes, just let me get my coat."

He had already picked up her coat to help her before she'd so much as finished the sentence. She turned her back to him to let him help her slip into her coat and then felt him pause and brush a kiss to the nape of her neck, sending a delicious little shiver through her. She should really wear her hair up more often around Castle, she thought fuzzily, since he enjoyed taking advantage of her upturned hairstyle to touch and kiss the sensitive skin of her neck.

Her coat on, she grabbed up her clutch and they left her apartment together. By the time they had stepped onto the elevator, his arm was around her waist, keeping her neatly tucked against his side, and before the elevator door slid closed, he was nuzzling her ear, dropping tiny, insinuating little kisses on her ear lobe, the sensitive hollow just behind her ear, the soft skin just before her ear, and generally doing an excellent job of making her wish the elevator was going up rather than down and that they were going towards her apartment rather than away from it.

Who needed dinner?

"Castle," she scolded—or tried to scold since his name came out sounding like a breathy moan. She took a breath and tried again. "Stop that or I'm dragging you back to my place and we'll miss our dinner reservation."

"Is that supposed to be a threat because I've gotta tell you, threats usually involve bad things," he said but he did stop.

"We are going to go out for a nice dinner and then come back here so I can give you your Valentine's Day gift." She left unsaid that she would do everything she could to distract him and cheer him up since if he had managed to push Damian Westlake from his mind, as it seemed he had, she wasn't going to remind him.

"You're very bossy," he pretended to complain.

"I thought you liked that about me," she retorted, giving him a quick smile as they stepped off the elevator.

He gave her a heated look. "Believe me, I do."

She felt herself flush, heat prickling her cheeks, so she was rather glad to step outside into the cold February air.

She'd been half-expecting that Castle would go all-out and hire a limo to take them to their date tonight so she was glad to see that he hadn't. He had, however, still hired a luxurious town car that was standing at the curb, the driver waiting to open the back door for her.

The driver nodded at her. "Good evening."

"Beckett, this is Eric. Eric, this is Detective Beckett."

"Hello, Eric," Kate greeted, trying to sound as if she was used to having a private chauffeur.

Eric inclined his head as he opened the door. "Detective Beckett. Mr. Castle."

They slid into the back seat and Kate noted that there was, as in a limo, a privacy screen separating the back seat from the driver.

She fleetingly wondered how much it had cost to hire a car and a driver for this evening, but then decided she didn't really want to know. It was bad enough that she fully expected their dinner tonight would be at some extravagantly expensive restaurant so far out of her price range as to be ridiculous. It was so easy to forget most of the time just how rich Castle was, but she was being reminded of it now.

Castle took her hand the moment they were seated, idly playing with her fingers. "Beckett, what is it?"

She glanced at him. "What is what?"

He lifted one shoulder into a half-shrug. "What's the matter? You look… uncomfortable."

She forgot how well he could read her expression nowadays. She hadn't realized her thoughts had shown so clearly—but then again, she knew that she wasn't really that easy to read to anyone else but rather that Castle knew her well enough to be able to read her expression, picked up on all her little tells, the ones that probably just about everyone else would miss entirely.

"It's… nothing, Castle."

He didn't respond in words, only quirked his eyebrows at her in response.

"I just… I always forget how rich you are," she blurted out and then bit her lip, feeling rather like an idiot. "Sorry. Never mind. It doesn't matter."

He abruptly bent and kissed her, long and deep and thoroughly, so that by the time he drew back, she had entirely forgotten what they'd been talking about. And what day was it again?

"Thank you, Kate."

She blinked at him. She might still be fuzzy from his kiss but, um, what? "For what?"

"For saying that. It's probably one of the best things anyone has ever said to me."

She felt like she was being uncharacteristically dense. "What? Why?" But even as she said it, her brain abruptly woke up. "No, never mind, I know why."

She remembered what he'd said after the Bobby Mann case, that he knew how hard it was to find real, disinterested friends. And what he had let slip about Meredith, that she had only been interested in him for his fame and his money.

And he didn't need to say anything for her to know that most of the women Castle had had flings with in the past would have been interested in him for his fame and his money; his good looks and charm helped but Kate was too much of a cynic (or a realist), had seen too much of what those celebutantes were like to believe that his looks and charm would have been his main attraction. She suddenly remembered what that woman at the MADT fundraiser—the one who had called Castle the "white whale"—had said, that she was on the fundraiser circuit and particularly liked the one with a lot of plastic surgeons, fish in a barrel, she had called them. Castle's money was what made him such a tempting target; even his looks and charm and fame would have been secondary.

Castle might have been willing, at the time, to take what those women offered so willingly but he was too intelligent not to realize that they didn't care about _him_ personally. No wonder he had kept all those women far away from the loft and Alexis—and it went without saying that he had kept them all very, very far away from his heart.

"I know you know, Kate," he said quietly.

She didn't say anything in response, only tightened her grip on his fingers as she brushed her lips against his cheek.

It wasn't long before the car was slowing to a stop and then Eric opened the door for them.

Castle slid out first and then helped her out of the car, while she took in where they were. Castle had steadfastly refused to identify the restaurant he had made reservations at. This was _Daniel_ , she had heard of the place, consistently ranked as one of the best restaurants in the City, with two Michelin stars. She had (obviously) never been here but her parents had once eaten here when her dad's law firm had had a special event for a big client and had enjoyed it so much that her dad had splurged and brought her mom here for their 20th wedding anniversary (having made reservations months in advance).

"Enjoy your dinner, Mr. Castle, Detective Beckett."

"Thank you, Eric. I'll call you when we're finished," Castle told him.

"Of course, sir. That will be just fine."

Castle took her hand and led her inside the restaurant where they were greeted by the maître d', who greeted Castle familiarly, and a waiter, who took their coats.

They were led to a table in a nice private nook of the restaurant.

Kate smiled at Castle. "I'm impressed, Castle. I've been curious about this place for years." (Curious, yes, but in the sort of distant way one was curious about the lives of Hollywood stars. She'd never expected to be able to eat here.)

He shrugged a little. "I live to please, Beckett."

He spoke lightly but she found herself thinking that it was really true. He would do so much to make the people he cared about happy; it was just who he was.

"You do please," she told him quietly.

He smiled but as was characteristic of him, sought to divert attention from his own generosity. "So Ryan and I weren't able to get Espo to tell us what he got for Lanie for Valentine's Day. All he admitted was that he did get Lanie something so we might need to rely on you to pry it out of Lanie sometime. I think those two are getting serious. Has Lanie said anything to you?"

"Lanie plays it close to the vest," she answered. All Lanie would say about her relationship with Esposito was a rather cryptic, "We're good," although her small smile as she'd said it had been much more eloquent. Kate hadn't pried. Lanie had been burned by some bad romantic experiences which made her reluctant to tempt fate too much or expect too much from a relationship. Kate knew the feeling but Lanie compensated for it by being much more open to going out and having "fun," as she put it, going out for drinks a lot more often than Kate herself ever had and seemingly satisfied with a string of casual relationships. But Kate had never really done "casual," and obviously, now, with Castle, knew she was "done," anyway. It suddenly occurred to her that she was so grateful for that. There was a sense of… security in it, of being so sure she was in the last romantic relationship of her life.

"Well, I hope they make it. If only because it'll keep Espo from giving Ryan and me such a hard time for being so smitten ourselves."

He grinned as he said it but Kate didn't return his smile. The restaurant was rather dim but she abruptly noticed that his expression might be easy, as was his tone, but his smile didn't reach his eyes.

Oh. Oh Castle, no.

She'd been a little surprised at Castle's apparent ease from the moment he had arrived at her place. She didn't question the sincerity of his response to her—couldn't question that since he wouldn't fake losing his train of thought. But then once he'd recovered, he had been so… normal, distracting her with his touch and his kiss and it had all been so like his usual self. He had greeted the maître d' with his usual bonhomie and helped her into her seat as he always did when they went out and she'd been so relieved to see that he was apparently recovered from his disillusionment that she had been happy to be distracted, to let the thought of Damian Westlake recede into the back of her mind.

She suddenly hated herself a little. She didn't do this. When had she started to be so easily fooled, herself creating what she saw? She wasn't—unlike Castle—fanciful or imaginative but she had _wanted_ to believe that Castle was fine because she hated so much the idea of his being hurt, wanted to believe that they could still have the romantic Valentine's Day dinner she knew they had both been looking forward to, that she had let herself be fooled. To see not only what she wanted to see but also what he had made every effort to appear.

He was Martha Rodgers's son, after all.

"Castle, don't."

In her sudden upset at herself, her tone was somewhat sharper than she meant it to be.

His expression blanked as he gave her a look of confusion. "Don't what, Beckett?"

She reached out and covered his hand on the table with hers. "You don't have to do that with me."

"Do what?"

"Pretend."

The one word fell into the silence and seemed to echo like a death knell to their romantic dinner out.

He blinked, hesitated, and then said, carefully, "I don't know what you mean."

Oh. And that hurt too.

" _Rick_."

It was all she said, just his first name, but the use of his first name always got his attention and he recognized her tone. And after a moment, he sighed, his shoulders abruptly slumping.

The change in his expression, his entire demeanor, was a little shocking and it was, still, painful for her to see but it was mingled in with poignant happiness too. Because he wasn't hiding how he felt and that mattered more to her.

She, of all people, knew what it was like to hide her own emotions, holding everything she felt back behind the barricade that shielded herself from anyone's prying gaze. She knew what it was like and she knew, too, just what it cost a person to do that. It was something she hadn't allowed herself to really think about in all the years she'd been alone; there was no point in bemoaning something that she couldn't change and thinking about it only made things harder. So in the times when it had all become too much, when she had started to feel too drained… felt stretched to the last of her emotional resources, like butter spread too thinly over too much bread, she had only ever let herself fall apart in private. In the safety and solitude of her own apartment, drinking alone, sometimes crying, often curling up and rereading one of Castle's books, losing herself in the world created by his words.

But she didn't need to do that anymore. Didn't need to be so strong all the time. She could let herself fall, knowing that there was someone who could and would catch her and hold her up when she could no longer support herself.

And she could be strong enough to support him when his own strength failed.

She suddenly remembered what her dad had said to her on the anniversary of her mother's death this year, that being in a relationship meant letting someone—Castle—comfort her. The reverse was true too, that being in a relationship meant comforting him when he needed it. Give and take.

She sometimes felt as if she were being selfish in their relationship, felt as if she was always taking and taking, accepting his support and his humor and his love, while she didn't really reciprocate. His love and his caring were so selfless; he never stinted in taking care of, protecting, and supporting those he loved.

She could tell herself that it wasn't that she didn't want to support him but that for the most part, he didn't need her support. It was even largely true. He was strong enough that for the most part, she hadn't really needed to comfort him. He had turned to her after 3XK had captured him and he shared with her his occasional worries over Alexis but it was true that in many ways, she was the broken one of the two of them, the weaker one.

But now, because of Damian Westlake's perfidy, for once that wasn't true. She had thought it earlier right after they had learned the truth about Philip Westlake's murder and it was still true, that it was her turn to comfort him, her turn to be there for him.

"I just… it's our first Valentine's Day together, Kate. I don't want to ruin it."

"You aren't; you haven't, Rick. Do you think I could really enjoy our date knowing that you're just faking it for my sake?"

"Put like that, no."

"Good. Then don't insult me by acting like you think that."

That got the ghost of a smile from him. "Okay."

They were briefly interrupted as the waiter returned to take their drink order, the atmosphere lightening a little with the pause as Castle ordered a bottle of wine.

"It's okay to be sad and hurt," she told him quietly once the waiter had left. "He was your friend and you believed in him. I understand, Castle."

He sighed, his free hand fiddling with one of the pieces of silverware on the table, idly turning it to reflect the light from the candle on the table. It was a Castle-like thing to do; he was a fidgeter and he had all a child's fascination with basic aspects of science visible in daily life like reflections, refractions, rainbows, the properties of light and fire and sound. But for the first time, it was obvious that he was taking no pleasure in watching the light play off the silverware, was just doing it half out of habit and half to have something to look at. She usually found it irritating when he did things like this, had even snapped at him to stop it a few times when they'd been out, but she found that she wanted him to display some of his usual enthusiasm over this sort of thing. And at that moment, she couldn't imagine ever snapping at him for his childish play again. She wanted her playful Castle back.

"I did believe in him. I looked up to him. And now I feel like such a fool."

"Castle, no, you weren't a fool. You were being a loyal friend, a more loyal friend than Damian deserved, but that's on him. You believe in people and that's a good thing."

"He killed his father, Beckett. I never thought… he was the first one who accepted me at Edgewyck. He gave me a chance, he encouraged me. Why would he—how could he do that and then kill his father for money just a few years later?"

He suddenly sounded very young, such confusion, such disillusionment in his voice.

It was always hard to come to terms with being disappointed by people. Hard to accept one's heroes had feet of clay—or worse, were really not heroes at all. In some ways, people still had the tendency from childhood to want to think of people in black and white terms, all good or all bad. It was simpler, easier that way.

"Captain Montgomery told me once that people are more than the mistakes they make and by the same token, people are generally not quite as good as the best thing they have ever done either."

He gave her a look. "Don't patronize me, Beckett. Damian murdered his father. We're not exactly talking about a venial mistake here."

She inwardly winced. "I know, Castle. I wasn't trying to justify him." She paused, and then added more quietly, "I'm a homicide detective, Castle. I'm the last person in the world to minimize the seriousness of murder."

He flinched a little. "I know."

"I was just trying to say that when it came to you, Damian probably really was a good friend."

At least at the time. She wasn't quite so sure about Damian's actions lately, suspected he had likely been manipulating Castle this week, even if he hadn't killed Vicky. He must have known that his actions would make him suspect—and so he had called up his old friend, knowing that said old friend worked with the NYPD and would be an advocate for him. As, indeed, it had proved. But she didn't say that.

"And people do change, Castle, as they grow up."

"That's not what you've said before."

"I don't mean they change in essentials but it's still a process of evolution. A golden retriever puppy is never going to grow up to become an adult greyhound but it doesn't mean the puppy is going to stay a puppy forever either. I mean that as people grow up, it's something like what you said about the effect of money. When we're in high school or in college, we're still in formation, as it were, still in the process of learning who we are. We're still moldable, like clay that hasn't been hardened yet, and events can change the shape of the clay. But as we grow up, the clay hardens so the years essentially magnify who we are, make us more of the person we had the potential to be when we were young. When Damian was at Edgewyck, when he met you and helped you, he was still young, was still figuring out what kind of person he was going to be. The fact that later, when he was in college, he… hardened to become more self-centered doesn't change what he had already done earlier."

"'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference,'" he quoted, more to himself than to her.

"'Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back,'" she quoted in return.*

He met her eyes and she saw with a sudden lift of her heart the faint beginnings of the spark that usually appeared when they traded quotations.

The moment was broken at that opportune moment when the waiter returned with their wine and then they both were distracted by the need to order their meals.

That done, a silence settled over them, one that Kate broke by asking, quietly, "Tell me about Edgewyck, Castle." He would be thinking about it and remembering that time anyway and she would rather he talk to her about it than brood in silence. And she did want to know more about him.

"Edgewyck." His lips twisted a little and he took a large gulp of wine, not bothering to try to savor it at all, which was unlike him too. "It was the first boarding school I ever went to and I was… miserable. I was just a scholarship kid but it's one of those fancy schools, like Choate, you know, where just about everyone else was from money."

He paused, focusing his absent gaze on the candle on the table, his expression darkening at what he was remembering. "You can imagine how… popular I was, the scholarship kid who didn't know who his father was." He broke off while Kate stiffened a little. He never mentioned his father or lack of one. She didn't think he had ever said anything about what it was like not knowing who his dad was, not really. "I hadn't learned—yet—that the trick to getting bullies and other mean kids to stop tormenting you was to pretend you didn't care."

Oh. She was learning where and why Castle had learned to develop his frivolous, insouciant shell, when his habit of using humor as a shield to deflect attention from the things that bothered him had really begun. And then, even after that, she guessed that it would have gotten worse because of everything that had happened with Meredith, with the groupies and hangers-on he would have acquired when he became rich and famous.

She thought about the jackass persona Castle had first shown her, the cocky, frivolous, and rather insufferable playboy she had first met.

They should have been like oil and water, absolutely incompatible, but somehow, she was beginning to realize, in a form of alchemy (or magic), her prickliness and her general irritability with him had, gradually, made the shell he had developed wear away. She thought about what he'd said—implied—in the car on the way over here and thought with a flicker of amusement that maybe her own hard shell, developed over the years, had made him willing to trust her, oddly enough, had made him start to lower his own shield and act more like himself. A man who was used to getting what he wanted because of his money and fame and then he'd met her, who had not liked him in spite of his money and fame (and charm). It was, perhaps, not that surprising at all that he would have realized that the way to make her like him was to be more sincere and to be helpful on cases, and he'd been both. And his showing her more of the real kind, caring man he was had started the process of chipping away at her own walls.

Until somehow here they were.

"I was the loner, the outcast. You can imagine that boys with names like Peyton Cabot Harrison III wouldn't exactly leap at the chance to befriend a boy who didn't know his own father's name and whose mother was an actress." There was a hard edge to his tone as he said the name and Kate suddenly remembered what he'd said after they had escaped that awkward dinner with Ashley's parents back in the fall, that he didn't get along well with respectable, traditional people. She had wondered, at the time, what he'd been referring to and she had a feeling she had just found out.

"It had never really bothered me before, growing up surrounded by theatre people the way I did. Theatre people aren't… conventional. A lot of them, my mom's generation, had been the first ones to embrace the 60's, Woodstock, and all that." He paused, quirking a faint smile. "I know this is probably shocking but my mom was a hippy back then," he added wryly with the first flicker of his usual humor.

She gave him a small smile in response. It was, she noted, the first time she had ever heard him refer to Martha as his mom and not his mother. He was lost in his memories and had reverted back to what she guessed he'd called Martha growing up. "Really? But Martha is such a traditionalist," she ventured with gentle sarcasm.

She was rewarded with a brief chuckle. "Yeah, right."

He sobered, his expression becoming grim and pained again, taking another large swig of wine. (It occurred to her that at any other time, Castle would be horrified at imbibing such a good bottle of wine so carelessly. She was reminded of the way he had reacted to that arrogant young creep Magoo, who had bought that bottle of whiskey in their case at the Old Haunt.)

"Damian—he was the first one to talk to me like a person; he was the one who told the other boys to give me a chance. He was… a junior at the time, two years older than me, and well, when he talked, people listened. He was one of the in-crowd, partly because he was smart and talented but also because he was a legacy. His dad had gone to Edgewyck and had been classmates with the dean of the school so Damian was one of the favorite sons."

It was no wonder that Castle had believed in him, had built Damian up in his mind. Damian had had the outward makings of a hero, like Fitzgerald had written, and then tragedy had followed. Or like in _Paradise Lost_ , with how Lucifer had once been the most beautiful of all the archangels before his fall.

"I managed to make friends eventually but Damian—he was the one who made it possible, the one who opened those doors for me. He was the one who—" Castle broke off as their food arrived, which caused a little disruption and Kate couldn't decide if she was glad or upset that the food had arrived when it had. Castle's expression and his tone were persistently bleak, the memories he was reliving as he spoke not pleasant, but at the same time, she had never heard him speak so much about his past, certainly not about this painful part of his past. For all Castle's prattling tendencies, when he spoke about himself, he tended to concentrate on the part of his life after he had become Richard Castle, the success. She supposed that Castle himself preferred not to think about the earlier time, could guess that part of the reason he had changed his name in the first place was an attempt to get away from his past, as if he could make himself a different person, one who had never known anything other than fame and wealth and popularity. Aside from what little he had told her about Damian during the case, this was the first time she'd really heard him talk about the time when he'd been Ricky Rodgers.

And it was so precious to her. She knew just how much it meant to have him open up to her like this, to share part of his past like this.

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, focusing on eating their food, which was excellent, although Kate suspected that they were both too distracted to really do justice to it.

It was unusual, to say the least, for Castle to be so quiet as he ate but she let him be. She suspected that he wanted, needed, a little time to process everything.

As did she, really.

She found herself thinking that after all, this was romantic too. Romance wasn't about flowers and chocolates and candle-lit dinners (the fact that they were currently eating a candle-lit dinner, notwithstanding); romance was in the sharing, in the fact that he was talking to her, letting her in. Romance wasn't always in the purely happy times but was in the sad times too, in comforting each other.

It occurred to her, with a little flicker of errant amusement, that anyone looking at them might think that they had had a fight or maybe had been together so long that they stayed together out of inertia but didn't really care much about each other otherwise.

Castle didn't speak but after a moment, once he had finished cutting up his steak, he reached out with his free hand and grasped hers across the table and held it.

It was a little awkward to be eating her meal one-handed but Kate didn't care. She wasn't going to let him go.

And so they ate in silence, for probably the first time since they'd met, with only their hands joined.

Kate kept her gaze mostly focused on him as she ate—and was guiltily aware that afterwards, she couldn't have sworn to the quality of the food she ate, only tasting maybe one bite out of every five—and she thought that, maybe, after all, this was still turning out to be the most romantic Valentine's Day she had ever had.

Because this was love—and what could be more romantic than that?

He had started to push his food around on his plate rather absently.

"You okay, Castle?"

He looked up at her. "Sorry, Kate. I'm being a terrible date. I don't know why you put up with me."

She squeezed his fingers hard enough to get his attention. "Stop apologizing, Castle. You're allowed to be upset and anyway, this is just one date. We'll have plenty of others."

The corners of his lips eased upwards just a fraction at this reassurance but faded quickly as he sighed. "I just… can't stop thinking about it. I became a writer because of Damian. I'm… who I am today because of Damian. What does that say about me?"

She really hated Damian Westlake. She remembered again the John Allen case and what she'd said then, that it was hard when everything you thought you knew turns out to be a lie. Being so badly wrong about Damian had shaken the foundations of Castle's beliefs, his loyalty and his faith in his friends that was so much a part of him. And it was worse, too, because of how important Damian had been to Castle's development as a writer, she realized. She knew how much being a writer meant to him; it was almost as central a part of his identity, his sense of self, as his love for Alexis was and then to be so wrong about Damian… It was making him doubt everything else too.

"Castle, what Damian did doesn't say anything about you, either the boy you were or the man you've become. All it says is that you're a more loyal friend than he deserved. You say that you became a writer because of him but I don't think that's true. If not Damian, someone else would have noticed your talent. You're too good a writer for it to have gone unnoticed. Some people have their lives take unexpected detours, have to change their goals and fall into their jobs by accident. It was what happened to me. But you, Castle, I think you were always meant to be a writer. You told me yourself that being a writer is who you've always been." She paused and gave him the faintest flicker of a smile. "And Castle, I do know the way you think now and you think in terms of stories. You're a storyteller so I don't think you could ever have become anything other than a writer."

"Kate, I… I don't know what to say…"

She managed a small, teasing smile. "If you're trying to make me change my mind about you always being meant to be a writer, it won't work."

He laughed and for the first time that evening, the laugh reached his eyes, the spark of amusement brightening the blue of them.

"Thank you, Kate," he said simply.

They were far from the most eloquent words he'd ever used with her but she could see just how much he meant them in his eyes and that made them worth everything.

"Are you finished?" she asked, changing the subject abruptly enough that he blinked.

"Uh, yeah, I am." He glanced down at his plate and grimaced a little. "We'll have to come back here again some time when we can really appreciate how good the food is."

She affected a beleaguered expression. "It's a hard job but someone has to do it."

He laughed again and squeezed her hand as he lifted his other hand to signal a waiter. "Right."

She smiled at him. She could do this, could cheer him up and make him laugh.

She was suddenly impatient to give him her Valentine's Day gift and so she was pleased at how quickly they were able to leave after Castle paid the bill and they retrieved their coats.

He had called Eric while waiting for the check and so when they got outside, Eric was already waiting to open the door for them.

"Mr. Castle, Detective Beckett, I hope you enjoyed your dinner," Eric greeted them.

"It was delicious, thanks, Eric," Kate spoke up.

"I'm glad to hear it," Eric intoned as he opened the car door.

It occurred to Kate, not for the first time, that she was going to end up terribly spoiled from dating Castle. He was so generous and he loved taking care of the people he loved, including her. She knew he would say that she deserved it but she found it hard to believe that.

Kate snuggled into Castle's side during the ride back.

"Cold, Beckett?"

"A little," she lied. She wanted to cheer him up, distract him, and she knew full well how distracting he always found her proximity.

They were back at her apartment within minutes and Castle thanked Eric and sent him off with a generous tip, making Kate smile to herself. Castle did plan to stay the night. She had wondered if he still would after what had happened with Damian and now she knew.

Castle had made sure that Martha would be at the loft for Alexis, as he always tried to in the nights he spent at her place, so they were going to have their Valentine's night all to themselves. And, as much as she loved Martha and Alexis, she had to admit that she didn't want them around tonight.

They settled on her couch together, Castle tugging her against him to kiss her lingeringly.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Kate," he murmured as they drew apart.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Castle."

"I have something for you."

"And I have something for you."

He managed something approaching his usual smirk. "Ladies first," he said and reached into his jacket pocket to draw out a square-ish box and present it to her.

She gave him a smile as she opened it and then the smile turned into a soft huff of laughter as she saw what was inside. It was a silver bracelet—although, knowing Castle, Kate assumed it was platinum rather than silver—comprised of a thin chain but the important thing was the clasp, which was shaped like a miniature pair of handcuffs, studded with tiny diamonds. It was a sleek, elegant, and tasteful thing, and discreet enough that she should be able to wear it to work if she wanted to.

"Thank you, Castle. I love it," she said and kissed him.

He had—of course he had—written a note on a folded sheet of paper that had also been inside the box.

It was a sheet from the small pad of paper he kept on his desk where the top read "From the desk of Richard Castle." He had, however, crossed out the word "desk" so the legend now read "From the heart of Richard Castle."

She smiled. Such a Castle-like thing to do.

 _You amaze me every day with your passion, your kindness, and your fierce intellect. Being your partner is the greatest privilege of my life and has taught me more than I ever knew there was to know. Every time I see you smile at me, every time I get to hold you in my arms and kiss you, I know that I'm the luckiest man in the world._

 _Happy Valentine's Day._

 _Love, Rick._

She let out a shaky breath. "Oh, Rick…"

He reached out and took the hand that was holding the note in his. "There's one more thing, Kate. I didn't write it in the note but after today, especially, it needs to be said."

She looked up and met his eyes, seeing the utter sincerity in his eyes that echoed the sincerity of his tone. "You're my best friend, Beckett, and I'm—I'm not sure I ever had that before. It means a lot to me."

Oh, Castle. She suddenly felt absurd, irrational tears pricking at the back of her eyes. She knew how lonely she had been before he came along, even with Lanie and the boys in her life, but she understood now that he might have been, in many ways, just as lonely as she had been. It seemed ridiculous, even impossible, but she knew him well enough now to know it was true. He knew a lot of people, had many shallow friendships of a sort, but as he had told her after the Bobby Mann case, he didn't have many true friends. Not friends he could really confide in. The people he had always trusted the most, the ones who were closest to him, were Alexis and his mother but they were his family and as much as he trusted them, he was the one who took care of them, comforted them. On a day like today, she suddenly wondered who, if anyone, he could have talked to about his disillusionment in Damian. He had no one else, only her, for that. And she was suddenly incredibly glad that she had been here for him, that she'd been able to listen to him tonight.

Not only because she loved him or because they were in a relationship and that was what being in a relationship meant. But because she was his _best friend_ —and that had a significance all on its own.

"You're my best friend too." He really was, with all due regard for Lanie. He was the first person she wanted to talk to about anything, good or bad. And at this moment, that truth seemed to be just as important, just as meaningful, as telling him she loved him.

He fastened the bracelet on her wrist and then paused to press a kiss to her palm, giving her the beginnings of a teasing smile. "It occurred to me that I owed you for cuffing me on that first case we worked together so I thought it was about time I got even."

She blinked, thought, and then smirked. "If you're talking about the time I arrested you, you deserved it. What did you expect me to do after you stole evidence about a case from a cop's desk?" she asked.

He laughed. "I wasn't talking about the time you arrested me, Beckett. I meant the way you cuffed me to your car when you and the boys were going after Harrison Tisdale."

Oh, that. She had to laugh at the memory. She had been furious with him for getting out of her cuffs and putting himself in harm's way—even as she'd been reluctantly impressed that he had somehow managed to get the keys to her cuffs without her even noticing. "You still deserved it. I warned you to stay out of the way but you didn't and so you ended up getting into trouble."

He affected an injured expression. "Yes, but I got myself out of trouble that time too, remember?"

"You were lucky that time because Harrison Tisdale was an inept hostage-taker."

He shrugged a little. "I knew you would save me."

"I still don't like it that you run into trouble like that," she told him with as much severity as she could muster—which wasn't much at the moment.

He held out his hand and wriggled his fingers at her a little. "Never mind that. Give me my present, Beckett."

She laughed softly and did as he asked, reaching out to retrieve the box and then placing it in his outstretched hand, sobering as she did so.

He opened the box and stared rather blankly at the copy of _Storm Warning_ inside.

"You're giving me… a copy of my own book?"

"Open it."

He reached for the front cover, paused, and then lifted his hand again to look at the dark smudges left on his fingers and she saw the beginnings of suspicion dawn on his face as he lifted the book to his nose and sniffed. "This smells like… smoke." He lifted his eyes to meet hers. "Beckett…"

"This was in the nightstand of my bedroom in my old apartment," she answered his unspoken question. "That's why it wasn't burned but the ash stains couldn't be completely cleaned off."

"You… saved this?"

He sounded amazed and humbled.

"Open it," she said again.

And this time, he did, his touch as delicate as if the book was a priceless piece of incunabula. And sucked in a sharp breath as he saw his own handwriting.

 _To Kate. "If you want peace, fight for justice." Richard Castle._

 _Storm Warning_ had been the first book in which he had written about Derrick Storm's motto, which was, she expected, why he had chosen to use it as the brief message in the books he signed.

Underneath it was the Valentine's Day message she had written.

 _Dear Rick,_

 _You saved my life before you even knew who I was. I know I'm still not very good at talking about what I feel but I want you to know that you are the best thing that has ever happened to me and I'm thankful every day that you're in my life._

 _All my love, always, Kate._

"Kate." His voice sounded almost strangled with emotion as he stared at her. "I—I don't remember signing this."

"I know," she told him gently. She lowered her eyes to his handwriting, reaching out to trace one finger lightly over his signature. "It was a rainy day. You were wearing a navy blue shirt and when you asked me who to make it out to, you smiled at me and then when you handed me the book back, you said 'thanks for coming. I appreciate it.'" The words had been trite, meaningless, but when coupled with his smile, even his impersonal publicity smile, and his charm, it had still somehow felt sincere, made her feel as if he honestly meant it.

"Oh god, Kate, I can't believe I don't remember meeting you."

"Why would you remember? I was just another face in a long line of your readers. You didn't remember signing a book for Scott Dunn either."

"Yeah, but you're… _you_."

She couldn't quite help but smile at this rather irrational statement, although it faded quickly. "I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad for not remembering, Castle. I just… want you to have this to show you that I mean it when I say that you—your books—saved me."

"I don't understand," he faltered. "I know I've saved your life a couple times since we started working together but Beckett…"

"Ssh, Castle, just listen." She paused, trying to gather her thoughts and keep a grip on her emotions. She wasn't, unlike him, a story-teller and this was one story she had never really told anyone. Will had known some bits and pieces of it but that had mostly been what he'd extrapolated from things she'd said. She had made up her mind to tell Castle—he deserved to know—and this was really what her Valentine's Day gift for Castle was, telling him, finally, just what his books had meant to her.

She couldn't quite meet his eyes, though, kept her gaze focused on the collar of his shirt, one hand smoothing it out unnecessarily. "I told you once that I started to read your books after my mom died. Mom had loved your books and reading them made me feel… closer to her. It was like I could hear her voice in my head as I read, telling me what parts she liked best, which characters really stood out in her mind."

She hesitated and then went on, not quite fluently, her voice very quiet. "It was… a bad time for me, those first years. My dad was—he was… not himself… and the cops—Raglan—had already told us they were giving up, that it had just been random gang violence." Her lips twisted, an edge entering her voice at the last words, tinged with all the bitterness and anger she had felt then, the anger she still felt even after all these years.

Castle didn't speak, didn't interrupt her, but he lifted his hand and cupped the back of her neck in a gesture of silent tenderness. She felt some of her tension drain out of her at his touch and it allowed her to go on, a little more calmly.

"I didn't have many friends then. I lost contact with my college friends because I just… couldn't go back to a normal life. I was so… alone but I had your books and your books… saved me. Your books… showed a vision of justice where the victims always mattered. Your heroes, whether it was Derrick Storm or Cadmon Felse** from _A Rose For Everafter_ or Avery Mattheson from _In a Hail of Bullets_ , cared about finding the truth for the victims and they always did, even when it had been years since the crime happened. I was drowning… and your books were solid ground. They gave me a purpose, made me decide I would do what your heroes always did and get justice for the victims."

He gave a strangled sort of gasp.

She flicked her eyes briefly up to his eyes to see that he was staring at her as if he'd never seen her before, deep emotion dawning in his expression like a sunrise.

"Your books—your words—inspired me, encouraged me." She lowered her eyes to what he'd written again, skimming her fingertips over the quote he had written. "When I had a hard or a frustrating day, when it seemed like all the leads I found led to nothing, I read your books and they reminded me what I was doing and why, fighting for justice."

In the times when she wanted to give up or when part of her wanted to rebel at the idea of finding justice for other people when she hadn't even been able to get justice for her own mother, she had read his message and it had helped.

It was why she had kept _Storm Warning_ in her nightstand. She had read and reread the message he had written as if it were a talisman to motivate her, even knowing it was irrational to react as if the message he had written had been a personal one directed just to her. She could see, now, that it didn't say much good about her state of mind back then, showed just how solitary and alone she had been, but the fact remained that his words, his books, _had_ saved her, had given her strength when she needed it.

She had put _Storm Warning_ away on her bookshelf with the rest of his books in a fit of annoyance after he had started to shadow her and she had been so irritated by him and so disappointed to find that her favorite author, the one whose books had meant so much to her for so many years, had turned out to be an annoying, cocky jackass. But as they had slowly become friends, and after the Coonan case, she had read the message again, with fresh appreciation for the significance of the sentiment, and had returned _Storm Warning_ to its usual place in her nightstand. Which had, fortunately, saved it from being destroyed when her old apartment had exploded.

"Kate…" His voice sounded unlike himself, it was so full of pent up emotion, and he had to pause to swallow before he finished, "Kate, you should keep this. I can't take something that means so much to you. I—it's enough just to know… what you told me."

She looked up and met his eyes again. "No, Castle, I want you to have it because, you see, I don't need it anymore."

An almost imperceptible wince flickered across his face and she realized that he'd misunderstood what she meant. "What I meant, Castle, is that I don't need to rely on your _books_ to support me because I have _you_ now."

He released a shaky breath and his lips parted, closed again, and then opened as he visibly struggled for words. And then abruptly, he pulled her forward and kissed her. He kissed her as if the world had suddenly become a vacuum and she the only remaining source of oxygen in it. He kissed her as if he would never let her go again and in his kiss was all the emotion he couldn't quite express. All his love, all his amazement, all his humility, all his tenderness.

She slid her hand up around his neck and kissed him back with all her own emotion.

The kiss didn't end until they were both flushed and breathless, his eyes clear of anything except for love and lust.

She managed a small smile. "Castle," she whispered a little breathlessly.

"Hmm?"

"That was only part of your Valentine's Day gift."

He blinked and then his expression lit up with anticipation. "Where's the rest of my present then?"

She deliberately lowered her voice to sound husky. "I'm wearing it," she told him with an expression as demure as she could manage before taking advantage of his choke in reaction by pushing herself to her feet and deliberately retreating. She threw him a half-teasing, wholly seductive look over her shoulder. "You want to come see?"

He had scrambled to his feet before the words were fully out of her mouth and she laughed softly and quickened her steps, just a little, allowing him to catch up with her easily.

He snagged her wrist in his hand and easily tugged her in to crowd her against the wall, his lips immediately lowering to find the sensitive spot below her ear lobe and then leaving a trail of damp kisses further down her neck until she moaned and tangled her fingers in his hair to drag his lips to hers.

They stumbled the few steps into her bedroom blindly, still kissing, while she busily divested him of his tie and then his shirt.

He caught her hands in his before she could proceed to rid him of his pants too and when she threw him a narrow-eyed look, he met it with a heated look of his own. "Wait, Beckett, don't I get to unwrap my gift?"

Well, if he put it like that…

He did unwrap his gift, very slowly, taking his time about it and making sure to appreciate every bit of it with maddening, infuriating—and utterly erotic—thoroughness. And then when she'd been reduced to incoherent, breathless moans, he finally, finally gave her what she wanted, what they both needed.

And later, much later, by the time she drifted off to sleep, snugly curled in his arms, his deep, even breaths stirring her hair, she was quite sure that she'd succeeded in driving thoughts of anyone except her out of his mind.

 _~To be continued…~_

* Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"

** The name Cadmon Felse is my little tribute to Ellis Peters and the detectives in her mysteries, Brother Cadfael and Inspector Felse.

A/N 2: I'm curious to know what people think of the Valentine's Day gifts Castle and Beckett gave each other. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about it before settling on what I did.


	22. Chapter 21: Countdown 1

Author's Note: Apologies for how long it's been between updates but I wanted to get the chapters revolving around "Setup" and "Countdown" right and then RL got in the way, not helped by me getting a cold that rather knocked me for a loop. If it's any consolation, this is another very long chapter, the first of two based on "Countdown". And it also includes one of my favorite Caskett scenes in all of S3 (and fortunately, in this universe, it didn't need to be ruined immediately afterwards by Josh's arrival). As always, some familiar dialogue ahead. Enjoy!

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 21_

Castle had always liked the cold. He tended to run warm so he always welcomed the first hint of a chill in the air in the fall and liked winter and snow, even with how dirty the snow always was in the city.

But after this, he was changing his mind.

Cold was terrible. He'd never felt cold like this before, seeping into his bones, making the very blood in his veins feel sluggish.

He felt like he was never going to feel warm again. Not that he could feel much of anything at all anymore.

The numbness was almost welcome compared to the icy burn, the pain of the cold, but with what little coherence he could muster, his thoughts torturously slow, he realized that this wasn't a good sign. His body was slowly shutting down against the cold.

He felt a shiver tremor through Beckett and managed, moving stiffly, to wrap his other arm around her, trying to tug her in even more closely against him and failing mostly because she was already tucked in as closely as she could get.

Beckett gave another shuddering breath. "Castle?" Her voice was faint, shaky.

"I'm here, Kate," he managed to murmur. "I'm all right," he lied.

"I can't… feel anything… Always thought, being a cop, I'd take a bullet. Never thought I'd freeze to death."

He would have thought he was numbed through but even now, the mental image conjured by the words had him flinching.

"Kate, no… Don't say that. This isn't… the end. We… haven't had enough time." They hadn't even spent a full year together, hadn't had nearly enough time. 40 years might be enough time—maybe—to spend loving Kate but to have had not even 1 year… He couldn't believe he'd finally found the love of his life only to lose her like this so soon.

"I wish this was one of your books. Then you could rewrite the ending…" she mumbled. She paused and then added, "Castle… if we make it out of this, I don't want… to spend any more nights alone. I want… to be with you at the loft."

He managed to turn his head to press his lips against her forehead. "That would be nice." He felt a flutter of determination spark inside him. They needed to get out of this. Kate wanted to move into the loft. His brain wasn't quite so sluggish not to realize the significance of that. It was a commitment. And Kate Beckett kept her promises.

Another shiver racked her body making her voice tremble. "If it's okay with Alexis."

Alexis. The name seemed to set up a flare of warmth in his chest for a fleeting moment. Alexis. He needed to live for her too, couldn't leave her. "Alexis… loves you too."

Kate didn't respond and he was suddenly terrified. She wouldn't last as long as he would in this intense, bitter cold. He never thought of Kate as being weak but the stark fact remained that she was smaller than he was physically, was not as strong. Her body would give out sooner than his.

"Kate?"

"Castle…" she murmured, her voice fainter than before, but he still felt a wave of relief. She was still with him. With him, but she was weaker, he could hear it in her voice. Her body was reaching the end of its endurance.

Because of him. His stupid inability to leave a puzzle unfinished, his impulsiveness. And he had dragged Kate with him.

"I'm… I'm sorry." He felt as if he were being strangled with remorse.

"For what?"

"For being… me. Going rogue. Getting you into this." He spoke in weird staccato fashion, wondered sluggishly if it was possible his vocal chords had frozen along with his numb lips. "If we hadn't… gone on our own…"

"No. Ssh, Castle, it's okay…" She struggled, managed to very slowly lift one hand, moving as if it weighed a million pounds, until her fingertips briefly brushed his face before dropping again. For the first time, he wasn't aware of feeling any warmth from her touch. "You were right. We found the bomb. We were just too late, okay?"

Even in this extremity, she was trying to comfort him. His heart hurt. The numbness in his body didn't extend to his heart.

"Castle… thank you… for being there."

He managed a faint twitch of his lips that was the best he could do with his numb, uncooperative facial muscles. "Always."

He felt Kate manage—how he wasn't sure—to turn her head creakily up, just enough so she could touch her lips to the underside of his chin. "Love you…"

Had he heard those words for the last time?

His eyes stung and he managed to blink for what felt like the first time in minutes. Realized belatedly that the tears that had welled up had managed, for now, to melt the frost on his eyelashes. "I love you too."

It took everything in him to move his head just enough so he could brush his lips against hers. For that fleeting second, he thought he could feel sensation in his lips again, felt the faintest movement of her lips.

Another faint shiver quivered through him as his cheek returned to rest on her head, his head too heavy for him to lift.

Her hand slipped bonelessly off his lap.

"Kate? Kate!"

She didn't respond.

"Kate, stay with me. Don't leave me…"

He couldn't lose her…

He couldn't move, couldn't think.

His eyes closed.

 _Kate… Alexis…_

* * *

Castle woke up to pain, sharp stabs of it piercing through him and he blinked his eyes open, wincing against the light of the—where was he?

He tried—and failed—to sit up but then sank back with a faint gasp.

A young man in an EMT uniform leaned over him, gently pushing his shoulder to make him lie back. "Whoa, Mr. Castle, you shouldn't get up yet. You're recovering from a moderate case of hypothermia but you're going to be all right."

What—what had happened?

He was alive.

Kate.

"Beckett," he groaned. "Where's Beckett?"

The EMT's response was only to say, "You need to rest."

Castle blinked his eyes, trying not to wince or moan at the needles of white-hot agony accompanying the wearing off of the numbness. Where was Kate? Was she okay?

"No," he groaned. "Is Beckett okay? Where is she?"

"I can't answer that," was the EMT's only response. "I haven't seen her since she was taken away to be treated."

Oh god. He really didn't like the sound of that. Castle struggled again to sit up and managed to lift his shoulders off the gurney.

"You shouldn't be getting up yet," the EMT scolded.

Castle ignored him. He needed to see Beckett.

"Castle."

Castle managed to twist his head to see Esposito standing just outside the ambulance.

"Beckett," was all he could say.

"She's in the other ambulance. She's going to be fine," Esposito reassured him.

Staggering relief had Castle sinking back onto the gurney. And after a moment, his sluggish brain realized he had other questions.

"The bomb?"

"We searched the entire warehouse. It's gone," Esposito answered rather grimly.

He nodded slightly, not entirely surprised.

"How'd you find us?"

"Oh, Alexis called. Said you didn't come home," Esposito answered easily.

Alexis? But she—

"Alexis? She's supposed to be out of town."

Esposito shrugged. "I guess she came back. We figured you were with Beckett. And neither of you were answering your phones and Beckett never turns her phone off."

"We thought you must be out there doing something incredibly stupid against orders, so we sent patrol units everywhere we figured you'd be moronic enough to go," Ryan chimed in, appearing to stand beside Esposito. "Found Beckett's car. Then we searched the area, until we found the light from the storage container."

Espo and Ryan exchanged congratulatory fist bumps.

"Well, I'm glad my stupidity's predictable," he managed to say tiredly. "You pulled us out of there? Thanks."

They had saved his and Beckett's lives.

Espo lifted one shoulder into a half-shrug and Ryan nodded, which with two cops was probably the closest they would come to acknowledging thanks.

Castle struggled and managed to push himself into a sitting up position—although he was distressingly aware that if not for the EMT's help, he would probably have flopped right back down again.

"Beckett. I need to see her."

"Mr. Castle, I told you, you shouldn't—" the EMT began.

Ryan interrupted him. "Let him. We'll help him."

The EMT looked as if he wanted to argue but then gave up and helped Castle out of the ambulance.

Castle almost staggered when he attempted to stand and Ryan and Esposito caught him beneath his arms. And with their help, Castle managed to take the handful of steps to the other ambulance. It was amazingly difficult to walk when he still couldn't feel his feet and the pain stabbing through his legs as the sensation returned to his frozen limbs wasn't helping his coordination.

Even before he got to the open door, he heard the faint sound of Beckett's voice. "… Castle? You need to let me get up."

Her tone had something of the Detective Beckett edge to it, the one that under normal circumstances, would have compelled a god to sit up and take notice, the tone that, if it had been delivered with its usual force, would likely have sent the hapless EMT she was no doubt arguing with fleeing.

"Beckett."

It was as much as he could say, out of breath from pain and the effort it had taken him to walk just the few steps even with Esposito and Ryan's help.

He was never taking the ability to walk for granted again.

Her eyes immediately found his and the way her eyes lit up and her faint, still tired, smile was… He couldn't think of a fitting simile. "Castle."

She was pale, looked as exhausted as he felt, and he could see she was racked with shivers in spite of the blanket wrapped around her.

She was still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

He struggled to clamber into the ambulance and then thought for one humiliating second, he would end up stuck lying on the ambulance floor when his limbs refused to cooperate, but then the other EMT—who must, it belatedly occurred to Castle, have nerves of steel to have stood up against Beckett, even in her current state—helped him up until he could collapse onto the gurney next to Beckett.

She immediately tipped over to lean against him and he managed to put his arm around her until his blanket was wrapped around both of them.

"You're going to need to debrief Fallon," Esposito spoke up, his voice as gentle as Castle had ever heard it.

"Give us a minute, Espo," Beckett said on something like a sigh.

She didn't sound like herself and Esposito nodded. "Right. You guys rest."

"Now if you'll listen," the EMT inserted, a trace of exasperation in his tone that Castle guessed was the direct result of what he imagined was Beckett's earlier intransigence. "I can explain to you what's going on. We've warmed you up as much as we can but you'll still feel unnaturally cold for at least another few hours. Your hands and feet, your extremities, will feel the most lingering effects but I've checked your hands and it doesn't look like you'll have any lasting problems from frostbite. Just make sure to drink lots of fluids. And avoid caffeine or alcohol, at least until you no longer feel cold."

Beckett gave a soft disgruntled huff.

"We will," Castle promised.

He didn't usually try to speak for Beckett—she was hardly the type to appreciate it—and under normal circumstances, he knew that getting between Beckett and her caffeine was a suicidal thing to do. But this one had been too close. He didn't need the EMT to tell him that. He had felt it. And he'd read about what happened when people literally froze to death after bad avalanches buried people alive in snow or for that matter, what had happened to huge numbers of Napoleon's troops in Russia during the Russian winter that had defeated Napoleon's attempt to conquer that country.

He'd thought he'd lost her.

He never wanted to feel like that again.

The EMT gave them a reassuring little smile. "You might feel a little groggy for a while but other than that, you should be fine." He sobered, directing a rather pointed look at Beckett, although she wasn't looking at him. "Just rest."

With that last instruction, he climbed out of the ambulance and left them alone.

"You okay, Beckett?"

She nodded against his shoulder. "Getting better."

He knew she must be in pain as the feeling returned to her limbs but he wasn't surprised that she didn't mention it.

She paused and then added, more quietly, "He wouldn't tell me how you were."

She didn't say anything more but he was able to fill in what she didn't say. He remembered how panicked he had been when he had first woken up and realized Kate wasn't beside him. That was why she'd been arguing with the EMT.

"I'm fine," he responded. He was, now that he'd seen her.

"Mm. Castle?"

"How'd the boys know where to find us?"

"Alexis called and they realized something was wrong. Figured we'd gone rogue and so they sent patrol units out wherever they could think of and found your car."

Another shiver racked her, making her voice tremble slightly. "Nice work."

"Yeah." He thought he was going to owe them for the rest of his life for this.

She was quiet for a long few minutes, her shivers becoming fewer. He felt the feeling returning to his legs, his thoughts becoming clearer.

"Castle?"

"Hmm?"

"What I said in the freezer… about wanting to move into the loft…"

His pulse picked up as if he'd just received an electric shock. Oh god. She wasn't—was she about to disclaim it? Something said in an emergency when she hadn't thought she'd ever need to actually act on it? He knew how independent she was and even after all this time, he found he was a little afraid to push her, terrified he would do something wrong and make her realize she could do better than him.

"Kate, it's okay," he quickly said. "We can—we can talk about it later."

"You really don't think Alexis will mind?"

She wasn't disclaiming it. "Alexis will love the idea," he predicted confidently. "And my mother thinks you should have moved in months ago."

She huffed a soft laugh. "And what do you think?" she asked and he knew she had to be feeling better. She sounded more like herself again.

"I'm not sure all your shoes will be able to fit into the closet."

She lifted her head a little. "You have a problem with my shoes, Castle?" Yes, there was definitely more than a trace of her Detective Beckett tone in her voice. He loved it. He loved her softer Kate side too but it was Detective Beckett he had fallen in love with.

"As long as your shoes come with you, no."

She snorted a little but nestled her head against his shoulder again. "Good."

He felt himself smile for the first time in hours and tightened his arm around her as he turned his head to press a kiss against her hair. She really was going to be fine. They were both fine. And she wanted to live with him!

They sat in silence for another few minutes until Kate stirred. "Come on, Castle, you think you're up to debrief Fallon?"

"Once more unto the breach," he responded glibly enough but he felt a fresh surge of adrenaline brought on by panic mingled in with determination. They _had_ to make Agent Fallon listen, had to find this bomb. Aside from anything else, there was no way in hell he was dying when Kate wanted to live with him, literally.

He carefully stood up and climbed out of the ambulance, relieved to find that now that he could feel his feet again—albeit they still felt rather like blocks of ice—he could walk more easily—and once he was out, reached back to give Beckett a hand.

Her movements were a little stiffer than usual, nothing like her usual fluid, powerful grace, which told him more than she would ever admit aloud about her lingering discomfort. More than that, she not only took his hand to help her but then retained her grip on his hand afterwards. Admittedly, their joined hands were mostly concealed by the blankets wrapped around them both but it was still more than he would have expected her to do with so many other cops around, to say nothing of Agent Fallon.

Agent Fallon and Captain Montgomery strode rapidly to meet them as soon as he saw them emerge from the ambulance.

Montgomery only nodded at them in passing. "Beckett. Castle."

"Sir."

Fallon regarded them both with a somewhat baleful look. "You two. Are you always this stubborn and insubordinate?"

Castle refrained from looking at Beckett. Stubborn was her middle name and he had his own fair share of it as well. As for insubordinate, well, he supposed he was that too; he'd never been good at listening to directions. "Only when we're trying to save the world."

"I'd be more impressed if you succeeded," Fallon clipped. "How did you know to come here?"

He listened in grim silence as he and Beckett briefly explained the reasoning that had led them back to the warehouse and what they'd found.

Esposito came over, hailing them to let them know that Kevin McCann hadn't shown up for work and appeared to be going off-grid.

"Agent Fallon, given the circumstances, we'd like to request to be reinstated on the task force," Beckett said, outwardly respectfully but Castle, at least, could hear in her tone the unspoken sentiment that Agent Fallon would have to be an idiot not to reinstate them given everything.

"Well, that's not up to me," Fallon answered rather mildly. He gestured back towards the EMT's standing outside the ambulance, which Castle had woken up in. "It'll be up to the docs there to clear you two."

Beckett immediately headed towards the EMT's, no doubt to order, badger, or cajole them into agreeing that they were able to return to the task force.

"She's very dedicated to the job, isn't she?" Fallon mused aloud.

Castle glanced at Fallon to see that he too was watching Beckett as she appeared to be explaining crisply to the EMT's just why she needed to be cleared for work. She wasn't, Castle could tell just from her body language, asking for their approval so much as demanding it, or at best, assuming she would get it.

"Yes, she is."

"She's impressive. We need more people like her around," Fallon commented.

"Yes," was all Castle said briefly, but then what more was there to say? He might be biased but of course Beckett was impressive—she was a force of nature—and Agent Fallon was too smart not to recognize it.

It was Fallon's turn to glance at Castle. "How long have you two been together?"

Castle shifted a little. Oddly, that wasn't a question he'd ever been asked before. "About 9 months." Well, 9 months, 2 weeks, and 5 days. Not that he was counting. Except, yes, of course he was counting.

Fallon nodded, his eyes and his expression becoming distant and what, in any other man, Castle would have described as melancholy, even wistful. "Good. We all should have someone in our lives to hold on to."

Castle stared. It was the most… human… thing he'd ever heard Fallon say. He had a heart after all.

He blinked and then added briskly, as if that moment had never been, "Get cleaned up. We've got a long day ahead of us."

With that, Fallon strode off to direct more uniforms in the next stage of operations and Castle went to join Beckett.

She greeted him with a quick, faint smile. "We've been cleared to rejoin the task force."

"I'm fairly sure I'd have been in danger of suffering serious injury if I hadn't cleared you," the EMT said dryly.

Now that she'd achieved her objective, Beckett flashed the EMT one of her quick, impersonal smiles, the one that could still probably make any man in the world agree to do anything she wanted—or maybe that was only Castle who found Beckett's smile so irresistible. But he didn't think so. Beckett was gorgeous and Castle knew very well how susceptible all heterosexual men tended to be to beautiful women. (But one of the things he liked about Beckett was that she rarely used the power her looks gave her for any purpose outside of work, which was more than Castle could say of just about every other pretty woman he had ever known, with the exception of Kyra. Certainly Meredith and Gina had never been shy about using their looks to get what they wanted. But then again, Beckett rarely asked for anything, period.)

The EMT returned Beckett's smile, momentarily looking rather flustered and young and Castle was confirmed in his belief that if it weren't for Beckett's ingrained independence (and integrity), she would have been a formidable femme fatale.

"Well, we appreciate it, Eli," she said.

Castle glanced at the EMT's name-tag on his jacket. Beckett liked to say she wasn't much of a people person, unlike him, but she didn't do herself justice either. She had her own way with people, not in the working-a-crowd sort of way but one-on-one.

"Just don't make me regret giving in, Detective. Take care of yourself," Eli answered. "You too, Mr. Castle."

"We'll do our best," Castle responded, shaking Eli's hand. "Thank you for saving us."

Eli shrugged it off. "I was only doing my job."

"Still, thank you," Beckett chimed in, shaking Eli's hand in turn.

Eli left to climb back into the ambulance and Beckett turned to Castle and he saw her droop a little from fatigue, no longer hiding it the way she had been for both Fallon's and Eli's benefit. She wasn't hiding it from him.

"You okay to drive?" he asked her quietly.

She nodded. "Yeah. Just going to keep the heat turned on as high as it'll go. We should get going."

"I think I'll catch a ride from one of the uniforms," he found himself saying, without having consciously realized he'd made such a decision. But she looked too tired, was still pale, and he wanted her to get home and warmed up again as quickly as possible, without having to drop him off first and then trek halfway back up Manhattan to return to her place. (She didn't keep nearly enough clothing at the loft. But they were going to change that.) "You go home and get changed and I'll see you back at the precinct in a bit. I'm going to head home, see Alexis."

"If you're sure…"

She neither looked nor sounded entirely happy with that and it occurred to him, again, how scared she'd been, that she was reluctant to leave without him.

He reached out and caught her still-cold hand in his, giving it a quick squeeze. He wished he could hug her or kiss her but with so many uniforms milling around, he didn't dare. "I'll be back before you know it, Beckett. Promise."

She squeezed his hand in return, giving him a ghost of a smile. "All right."

He accompanied her to her car and watched her drive off. Afterwards, it wasn't hard, fortunately, to find a uniform who was heading out to try to comb the city for the fatal white van and persuade him to drop Castle off at the loft while he was out looking for the van.

He returned to the loft just as the dawn was breaking over the city and Castle couldn't help but wonder bleakly if it was going to end up being the last dawn he—and many thousands of others in the city—saw.

A shiver that wasn't from cold racked his body as he thanked the officer and hurried into his building.

He wasn't surprised to see that Alexis and his mother were awake, waiting for him.

"Dad!" Alexis exclaimed the moment he walked in, leaping up and rushing over to him, followed immediately by his mother.

"Oh, Richard, darling! Oh, are you all right?"

"Are you using that blanket?" he asked instead. He was still freezing.

"No, I'm gonna give it to you," his mother fussed, handing over the blanket. "Oh you poor baby."

"Thank you."

"You look like death warmed over," his mother told him worriedly.

He really wished he had the energy to make a snarky response to that. But all he could manage was to say with an attempt at insouciance that fell grimly flat was, "If someone tries to sell you on cryogenics, say no."

He sat down heavily on the couch with some gratitude. He might be able to walk but damn, he'd had no idea that nearly freezing to death would be so enervating.

Alexis sat next to him, half-clinging to his arm even through the blankets. "I knew you wouldn't turn your phone off without leaving me a message."

He managed a faint smile, warmth blossoming in his chest. Alexis's trust that he would never go off-grid without telling her, even when he'd believed her to be out of town, had saved his and Beckett's lives. His darling girl.

"Now is this about the cab driver?" his mother asked.

He didn't have time to explain and he really didn't want to scare them but he needed to get them to leave. Again. As relieved as he was that Alexis had called the boys—and saved him and Beckett—now he needed to get her out of the city. That part had been clear from the moment Esposito had told him the bomb was gone.

He leaned forward, meeting Alexis's and his mother's eyes in turn. "Look, I need you girls to do something, for me. But I don't want you to ask any questions. I want you to go to the Hamptons. I want you to stay there for the weekend." He just hoped the Hamptons was far enough. It should be, he thought, for them to be out of immediate danger, no matter where in the City the bomb was set to go off.

"Richard, what is this about?"

He gave her a look. "Did you not—that's a question." His mother—being his mother—didn't blink or look away. And he knew from experience that Martha Rodgers would not listen or do as he said unless he told her why. She was, as she always reminded him, his mother and she didn't have to do what he told her to. He sighed a little. "Look, there might be… an event that would make it very dangerous to stay in the city," he hedged.

And then blinked as Alexis immediately pulled out her phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling Ashley."

She was pale and looked scared already, still. His heart twisted but he hardened his heart to the dismay in her blue eyes. He had to do this. "No no no no. You can't tell anybody. Okay? You can't tell anybody. You tell Ashley, he'll tell his parents, they'll call someone they love, and a panic will make this thing a thousand times harder to stop."

He hated saying this. But for once in his life, he had to be the voice of reason, the hard-hearted one. God, how did Fallon deal with this every day?

"Dad, he's my boyfriend," Alexis protested.

"I know."

Rebellion flickered across her pale face for a moment. "This isn't fair. You can't—"

"Fair has nothing to do with it," he interrupted her, gently but firmly. "I'm sorry, Alexis." He met his mother's eyes. "But I need you to go. Now."

His mother looked scared too, for one of the few times he could ever remember seeing. But she pressed her lips together and nodded. "But you'll come too?" she asked anxiously.

"I will when I can," he promised—and wondered sickly if he was finally making a promise to his family he wouldn't be able to keep.

He forced himself to his feet, ushering them before him. "You need to leave." He hurried into his office, tore a sheet off the notepad he always kept on his desk and a pen and hurriedly jotted down an address and a phone number, after checking his phone quickly.

He returned to fold the paper into Alexis's hand, pausing to press a quick kiss to her forehead. "One more thing that I want you to do for me," he told them. "This is Jim Beckett's address. I'm going to call him right now so he should be waiting for you. Go there and take him out to the Hamptons with you," he instructed quickly. He knew he was being a hypocrite, saving his own girlfriend's father when he hadn't allowed Alexis to call Ashley. But he _had_ to do it. For Kate. And it was different. Kate was… family too. And Jim was Kate's family, which made Jim his own extended family. "He might not agree and if he doesn't, don't kidnap him but try to persuade him."

"But Dad—" Alexis protested.

He silenced her with a look, one of the rare times in her life when he ever gave her such a look. He was rather surprised that it worked. "I know, Alexis, but do this for me, please—and for Kate."

She nodded and then abruptly clutched his hand. "You really won't come too, Daddy?"

He inwardly flinched. Her use of the childish name was evidence of how scared she was—she'd outgrown the word years ago and he missed hearing it but now, he hated it for what it meant. His baby girl. He'd never ever wanted her to feel hurt or sad or scared and he still wasn't entirely resigned to the fact that he couldn't protect her from all that. Any more than he'd been able to keep her from being hurt by Meredith's neglect.

"Richard, you and Katherine… be careful," his mother pleaded.

He nodded. "Go and drive carefully."

Alexis held back but his mother put her arm around her and gently encouraged her towards the door. "Okay. Come on. Come on."

"I love you both," he blurted out as his mother opened the door.

His mother and Alexis both turned around, Alexis looking stricken. "I love you too, Daddy."

He forced the best smile he could manage. "I'll see you guys as soon as I can, okay? Now go."

The moment the door closed, he was calling Jim Beckett. It was still early and on a weekend too but knowing Beckett the way he did, he couldn't imagine that Jim wasn't an early riser. And anyway, this was too important.

Unsurprisingly, in spite of the hour, Jim Beckett picked up after only two rings and sounded alert. "Hello, Rick."

"Hi, Jim. I'm sorry to call so early," Castle said rather perfunctorily.

"It's no trouble. What is it?"

He didn't have time to formulate his words. "My mother and Alexis are on their way to your place right now. Can you pack a bag to go away with them to the Hamptons for the weekend? I can't tell you why but—"

"I've talked to Katie, Rick," Jim interrupted him. "She tried to get me to go to my cabin for the weekend. I'll tell you what I told her. If Katie's going to be in danger, I'm not going anywhere without her."

Castle shut his eyes briefly. He should have known. Of course Kate would have called her father. He really was racking up the hypocrisy points today, he thought grimly. If Alexis were ever in danger, there wasn't a chance in hell he would agree to leave her side. He would go into hell and back to keep Alexis safe.

But for Kate's sake. Entirely aside from the fact that Castle himself had grown fond of Jim, he would always do whatever he could to preserve Kate's peace of mind.

"Look, Jim, I understand how you feel, believe me, but you really should leave. Not for yourself but for Kate. It'll be so much harder for her, and that'll make it harder for us to stop this thing, if she has to worry about you too. The Hamptons isn't that far and you'll know the moment there's anything to tell. But please, Jim, for Kate's sake, so she doesn't have to worry about you too, you should leave town."

Jim was silent for a long minute and Castle writhed a little inwardly. He hated this, hated doing this. He didn't like the shameless manipulation and in anything less than a life-or-death situation, he wouldn't do it, but he knew how much Kate fretted over Jim, although she'd never admitted as much in so many words. But Castle had seen Kate with Jim often enough, had heard Kate talking to Jim on the phone enough by now to know how hard Kate tried to keep her father from worrying about her. Kate had never—would never—say so to him in so many words but Castle could guess it was because Kate even now didn't want to test Jim's sobriety too much. More straightforwardly, he knew how much Jim meant to Kate. Kate wouldn't want Jim in danger and she would hate the idea of him worrying over her safety alone. She always did but in this sort of real, all too credible threat, it would be worse.

"That's not fair, Rick."

He winced. "I know, Jim, I'm sorry. But you have to believe I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't absolutely need to and if it'll keep Kate from worrying…"

Jim sighed. "I'll do it for Katie's sake," he said slowly, his reluctance audible in his voice, "because you're right that she'll worry. She already is worried."

Of course she was. But Kate wouldn't have tried to manipulate her father into leaving town, wouldn't have felt comfortable with that. Not with how carefully she still tended to treat her relationship with her father.

"Thank you, Jim. My mother and Alexis should be there in about 20 minutes. We'll call you as soon as we can, I promise."

He grimaced. God, he hoped he wasn't making promises he couldn't keep.

"I don't like doing this and I wouldn't leave if I thought there was even the smallest thing I could do to help Katie. But I do appreciate that you're doing this for Katie's sake. Just… try to keep her safe. Please."

"I'll do my best."

"Good luck."

"Thank you."

"And Rick, tell Katie… Tell her to be careful," Jim finished lamely.

Castle's heart hurt. He was a father too. And he knew what Jim meant was to tell Kate that he loved her.

"I'll tell her, Jim."

"Take care, Rick. I want to hear the moment this is over," Jim added, some severity entering his tone.

"You'll be the first to know," he promised.

"You be careful. And Rick, thank you."

Castle ended the phone call and then hurried to dig out the warmest clothes he had so he could get back to the precinct—and to Beckett.

He wasn't surprised to see that Beckett had beat him back to the precinct but then again, he'd also been delayed by stopping off at their usual coffee shop, getting decaf coffee for once, mindful of Eli's instruction to avoid caffeine, and instead of the customary bear-claw, opted to go for a bagel, freshly toasted and still hot.

He handed her the cup. "Figured you could use the warmth."

She gave him a faint smile. "Thank you." She paused and he saw her remember Eli's words just as she was about to take a sip and she raised her eyebrows at him.

"It's decaf," he assured her quickly.

She wrinkled her nose in automatic (adorable) reaction but the corners of her lips twitched as she took her first sip.

He held up the paper bag with the bagels inside it. "I also brought sustenance. Not a bear claw this time. I thought you'd prefer something warm."

She accepted the bag and peered inside and her face lit up as she gave him a bright, grateful smile. The sort of smile he would have walked barefoot over shards of glass to see, the sort of smile he fully intended to spend the rest of his life trying to elicit from her. She reached in and pulled out one of the bagels, not even bothering to unwrap it, only cradling it in her hands for a minute as if it were a hand-warmer. "Thank you, Castle."

The words were simple but her tone and her expression were quite eloquent enough for him.

"Also, I talked to your dad," he added quietly, leaning in towards her for some semblance of privacy.

She sobered. "My dad—what…"

"I persuaded him to go out of town. I sent Alexis and my mother to the Hamptons and they picked him up on their way out."

"But… I called him and I tried to get Dad to leave, go to his cabin, but he guessed something was up and he flatly refused. How did you…"

He inwardly winced. "I appealed to him, one father to another."

"And he agreed to leave?"

"Yes, reluctantly, but he agreed. He should be on his way out of the city with my mother and Alexis now."

She dropped the bagel on her desk, surging forward and for a split second, he thought Beckett might actually kiss him right there in the middle of the precinct but at the last second, she checked herself, abruptly remembering where they were, and instead caught one of his hands in both of hers and squeezed it. "Thank you."

And that moment made it all worth it, his guilt at manipulating Jim so shamelessly, at his own hypocrisy in persuading Jim to do something he wasn't at all sure he could bring himself to do if he were ever in Jim's shoes, at not letting Alexis call Ashley, easing. He would do it all again. He would do _anything_ —including finding a damn dirty bomb out God-only-knew-where and then finding a way to defuse it—if it meant he would be able to see Beckett look at him like this. Look at him as if he were a hero.

"I told Alexis and my mother they couldn't tell anyone else," he found himself blurting out. "They knew why I was ordering them to leave and they wanted to call their friends and I didn't let them. Alexis looked at me like… I felt like a monster."

"You did the right thing, Castle, as terrible as it sounds. We can't have people panicking."

He grimaced. "I know, that's what I told them." He glanced over to study Fallon, frowning at his laptop screen as he worked in the conference room. "I just… it makes me wonder what it's like for Fallon, dealing with this every day. I mean, that must be some kind of hell, feeling that, all the time."

She sobered. "I know. Kind of makes you wonder how many times this has happened since 9/11 and we were the ones who didn't know."

He sighed, looking over at Fallon again. "Yeah." He was beginning to understand why and how the DHS Agent was so harsh and hard-edged; he would probably become that way too if he had to deal with this sort of threat every day, not able to tell people but having to keep secrets like this all the time would corrode anyone's inner self. Acting on the side of the angels but having to use the tools of the devil to do it.

"Hey." She nudged his hand with hers and he looked back at her, feeling his grim mood lightening just a little simply from looking at her. It was hard to feel bleak or hopeless, even in the situation they were in now, when Kate was looking at him the way she was, all the warmth in her eyes. "Alexis and Martha and my dad—our family is out of danger and you did the right thing, what you had to do, Castle," she repeated quietly.

 _Our family._ She'd said _our family_. Oh Kate…

She handed him his own bagel. "Here, Castle. You'd better eat while you can."

He accepted his bagel, unwrapping it, as she did the same with hers. They ate in silence, Castle rather forcing himself to do so, even as he felt his stomach cramping out of sheer anxiety. He had a fresh empathy for Damocles, he decided. The story of the old myth had never seemed quite so relevant as it did now, waiting to hear more about the ticking time bomb that could annihilate the City.

He suspected Beckett felt similarly but she gamely nibbled away at her bagel.

She had only managed to eat about half of it before her phone rang and the brief, tortuous interlude was over.

* * *

It was, Castle decided later, the single stupidest, most reckless thing he'd ever done in his life. Which was saying quite a bit.

It was also quite possibly the bravest thing he'd ever done in his life.

(Easy to be brave when the only other option was dying horribly.)

He didn't care. He would think about it later.

All he knew in that moment as Beckett threw herself into his arms was that they were _alive_. Alive!

He shut his eyes and clutched her the way a drowning man would clutch a life-saver. He was gasping, his heart racing as if he'd just run a marathon.

They were alive!

When he'd thought the world was ending, in that last desperate second, he'd met her eyes and thought that if this was the end, all he really cared about was that he was with her. The world was ending but they were together and somehow, insanely, that had made all the difference.

She drew back, just enough to stare at him, and he decided for about the billionth time that he had never seen anything as lovely as her face, her eyes when she looked at him with her whole heart and soul in the green-gold depths.

Their eyes locked and then she was catching his face between her hands and he was surging forward and he didn't know or care who made the first move—they both made it—and then he was kissing her, no, they were kissing _each other_ as if there was no tomorrow, as if this would be the last time. Hard and desperately, still with an edge of lingering panic and despair.

There was the sound of a honk—whether directed at them or someone else, he didn't know—and they broke apart. Probably smart, given they were standing on a public street in broad daylight with half the cops in the city bearing down towards them, to say nothing of Agent Fallon.

"Castle…" she gasped. "I—you did it."

He really had, he realized, the stark reality breaking in on him and making him suddenly almost giddy. He'd stopped the bomb. He'd saved them.

"I did it," he repeated dumbly.

She laughed with sheer relief and he scrubbed his hands down his face and then made a triumphant, defiant gesture at the now-defused bomb. "Yes!" Ha! Take that, terrorists! He suddenly knew exactly how Derrick Storm must have felt after one of his death-defying stunts that saved the world.

Kate was smiling as broadly as he'd ever seen her as she leaned against the side of the van while he paced a little in a futile attempt to get out the jitters from rushing adrenaline. He had no doubt he would crash soon but at this moment, he felt like he could run from here to Philadelphia without breaking a sweat.

They heard the sound of a car door opening and they both turned to see Nazihah. "Please, my baby…"

Beckett snapped back into professional mode, her expression instantly sobering as she went over to the terrified woman, putting a gentle arm around her shoulders. "She's safe. She's back at the station now. It's over. You're both safe."

The sight of Nazihah's traumatized face, the reminder of all she'd been through, cut through his jittery euphoria like a sword, doing more to calm him than anything else probably would have. He stared at Beckett soothing Nazihah, amazed all over again again by her compassion, her heart.

A car almost skidded to a halt behind them and Agent Fallon was running over to them. "You—how did you—what did you do?" he demanded, out of breath.

"Stopped the bomb," Castle answered briefly.

He stepped back and gestured, letting Fallon see.

"You—you did this?"

Castle lifted his shoulders into a half-shrug. "I was desperate."

Fallon clapped him on the shoulder for a moment. "That was stupid," he said but he actually looked like the faintest smile was threatening to crack his expression.

"I know," Castle agreed.

Fallon shook his head a little. "Of all the dumb…" he trailed off and then just said, "Thank you."

Castle nodded, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. Oh god. What had he done?

The bomb disposal unit arrived in a flurry of sirens and a fleet of police cars surrounded them and the momentary peace dissolved into chaos.

Fallon turned away and started issuing crisp directives to the bomb disposal people on taking the disabled bomb into their custody.

Beckett briefly interrupted Fallon and had a quick exchange before Fallon nodded and then Castle and Beckett had collected Nazihah and were escorting her back to the precinct.

Nazihah broke down in sobs the moment a uniform brought in her daughter, clutching her baby in her arms and crying over her, even as she tried incoherently to thank them.

Beckett was watching them with a faint, soft smile curving her lips and Castle abruptly remembered and reached out to grip Beckett's wrist.

"Oh, Beckett, you need to call your dad." And he needed to call Alexis. "I promised we'd let him know as soon as this ended."

He felt a sudden stab of guilt at how he hadn't thought to call before now; it had been almost an hour ago that they'd stopped the bomb and his mother and Alexis and Jim had been worrying the entire time.

"Oh right." They both went around the corner where it was a little quieter. She pulled out her phone as he did his and pressed the button to call Alexis.

Alexis picked up immediately, so quickly he suspected she'd been waiting with her phone in her hand. "Dad?"

"Yeah, pumpkin, it's me. It's over and everything's fine," he told her quickly.

"You're really okay?" she asked anxiously.

"I'm just fine, not a scratch on me," he assured her.

"Oh good," she breathed. "So will you come out to the Hamptons, Dad?"

Oh right, he had promised that, hadn't he? "I'm really tired, Alexis, so I don't think so but you and Gram and Jim can come back tomorrow morning, all right?"

"All right, Dad. You and Kate are really okay?"

"We're both fine and we'll see you tomorrow. Have a good night, sweetie."

"Oh, Dad, wait, Grams wants to talk to you too."

Of course she did. "Okay."

A second later, he heard his mother's voice. "Richard?"

He repeated his reassurances for his mother, glancing at Kate to see that she was still speaking quietly into the phone, no doubt talking to Jim, and reassuring him of her own safety.

"There's really no more danger, Richard?" his mother asked.

"It's all over, Mother," he repeated. "The case is solved; the people responsible are locked up."

"Okay, good."

He looked up and caught a glimpse of Nazihah, staring down at her daughter as if she still needed to reassure herself that her baby was safe. He couldn't imagine how Nazihah had felt. He decided that Radford Hayes and his co-conspirators had to be soul-less sadists, not just for what they'd plotted, but how they'd taken away a baby to force Nazihah to cooperate. He shuddered a little. If it had been him… he would lie, steal, kill, commit every crime under the sun if it meant saving Alexis. Thank God Alexis had been safe in this. "Mother?"

"Yes, darling?"

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"For looking after Alexis today, going out to the Hamptons when I told you to. I know you hated doing it but I needed Alexis to be safe and I knew she would be with you." He and his mother would go back to their usual snarky baiting from tomorrow or so, he expected. He even preferred it that way; he was used to it. But today, right now, his emotions were still running too close to the surface and he was too tired to hold it in.

"Nonsense, Richard. I'm your mother. You don't need to thank me."

He managed a smile. "Okay, then I won't. Drive carefully on the way back to town tomorrow."

"Get some rest, Richard, and that goes for Katherine too."

"I'll tell her."

He ended the call and as if on cue, heard Kate murmur, "Good night, Dad," into the phone and hang up in her turn.

She sighed a little and then turned towards him, giving him a faint, rather tired smile.

"Your dad okay?"

She nodded, moving to stand next to him, closer than she normally would in the precinct, their hands brushing until she loosely hooked her fingers with his. "I haven't heard him sound so frantic in years. I had to tell him I was really okay and everything was safe about five times before he seemed to believe me."

"Yeah. Alexis sounded pretty upset too."

"At least it's over."

"It's over," he echoed.

"Yo." They both turned to see Esposito. "We got pizza and some beer. Come on."

Oh, pizza. Castle belatedly realized that he was hungry. They had all skipped lunch, of course—not that any of them would likely have been able to eat at all in all the tension—so he hadn't eaten all day since the half a bagel he'd had early this morning. And it was dinner time now.

They followed Esposito into the conference room to see that Captain Montgomery and Ryan were already there and starting to eat.

Castle exchanged quick smiles with Beckett before they sank down next to each other and for a little while, the room was silent as they all ate hungrily.

Beckett, predictably, was the first one to finish eating and then she stood up and threw out her plate, wiping her hands on a napkin.

It took longer for the men to finish but soon enough, they followed suit, leaning back in their chairs.

"Pass me a beer, Ryan," Montgomery instructed lazily, sounding at ease and relaxed for the first time in days.

"Yes, sir." Ryan did as asked and then raised an inquiring brow at Esposito, Castle, and Beckett.

Esposito nodded but Castle demurred, as did Beckett. Castle was, now that the adrenaline rush of the day was wearing off, still aware of feeling cold. Much better than it had been, obviously; he'd finally regained all the feeling in his fingers and toes but he still felt chilly.

"Betcha think you're Superman now, huh, Castle?" Esposito teased as he opened his beer and took a long drink. "Disarming a dirty bomb with your bare hands."

"Nah, he's not Superman," Ryan quipped. "Superman would have ripped the wires away from the bomb with his teeth."

Montgomery and Esposito both hooted with laughter.

"Yeah, Castle, that's what you should have done to really be a hero," Espo joked.

"My dentist wouldn't agree with you," Castle retorted, grinning. He was dealing with cops and they weren't the sort to praise. No, this was what cops did. They teased, made light of danger, used black humor to cope with grim reality. He was comfortable with it, certainly more comfortable than he would have been with fulsome praise.

"He's just lucky he didn't end up getting shot before we even got to the bomb," Beckett joined in, shooting him a teasing smirk.

"Why, what'd he do?"

"You should have heard him in the car. 'Turn now.' 'It's the wrong van.' 'You're going the wrong way.'" Beckett mimicked him with almost disturbing accuracy. "I was on the verge of shooting him myself."

Esposito threw him a look of feigned alarm. "Oh damn, bro, telling Beckett how to drive _and_ disarming a dirty bomb with your own hands? You do have a death wish, don't you?"

"Hey, I was right, wasn't I?" he protested with exaggerated defensiveness.

"How'd you figure out where the van would go?" Ryan asked with some real curiosity.

"Oh, he based it on his great insight into how taxi drivers think and calculate routes," Beckett answered teasingly.

"Always thought Castle had it in him to be a cabbie in another life," Espo jibed.

Montgomery gave a crack of laughter. "I couldn't believe my ears when I heard that you two were the first ones to catch up to the van and that Castle had stopped the bomb from going off. I guess writers are more useful to have around than I thought. More useful than these two were, sitting on their heels, monitoring the video feeds and watching a baby," he teased.

"Oh, hey, now, sir," Ryan protested mildly. "We were doing our jobs too."

"Yeah. And if we'd been there, we'd have disarmed the bomb even faster," Esposito added. "Special Forces-style."

"By putting a ribbon on top?" Castle quipped.

Esposito tossed a napkin at him. "Shut up, bro. You know you don't want to start something with me."

There was a pause and then Montgomery added, shaking his head a little, "Pulling the wires out of a dirty bomb. I have heard of people doing some dumbass things in my life but that really takes the prize."

"Wasn't the smartest thing I ever did," Castle agreed. No, the smartest thing he'd ever done was fall in love with Beckett—not that he'd consciously decided to do that either. He glanced back at Beckett, meeting her eyes. She smiled at him and then he stiffened a little as she rested her hands lightly on his shoulders.

It wasn't a caress, was an almost completely platonic gesture as things went, but it still startled him. Beckett almost never touched him at all when they were in the precinct, generally managed to treat him much as she always had before they'd been together. He didn't even mind it; he liked that their friendship, their partnership at work, had remained much as it was. The proof that his and Beckett's relationship had not changed the way their team worked or affected their case closure rate was reassuring. Not least because he knew that if their personal relationship had negatively affected their team or her work, Beckett would have tried to persuade him to stop shadowing her (and he would have had to agree in that situation. He wasn't selfish enough or stupid enough to think his own personal wishes should matter more than Beckett's work.) He didn't, now, fear that she would have broken up with him entirely over it—precious confidence! But their personal relationship hadn't interfered with their working partnership and he loved that. It gave him confidence that this with Kate could and would last.

Beckett was almost always professional in the precinct. So he could count on his one hand and have fingers left over the number of times she'd touched him in full view of Captain Montgomery and the boys when they were in the precinct. But now she was.

Montgomery didn't blink an eye, practicing selective blindness.

Ryan grinned.

Espo smirked.

And Castle tried very hard to look as if this sort of thing happened every day.

"Always knew you were crazy and now we have proof," Esposito quipped.

"Yeah, totally insane," Ryan agreed. "We'll call Doc Holloway and see what he says too."

They all laughed at the idea of what the department psychiatrist would say.

"Oh, you should've seen his face," Beckett told them, her voice suffused with laughter and, yes, affection too. "Because he stopped, he looked at me, he grabbed all the wires and then he just _yanked_ them."

Put like that, it really did sound insane. He didn't know how he wasn't dead.

"All of them?" Ryan asked incredulously.

Castle shrugged and grinned. "I figured one of them had to be the right one." Not that he'd been thinking straight at the time or had time to think at all.

"You know, the mayor wants to give you guys a medal. I didn't have the heart to tell him you had no clue what you were doing," Montgomery chuckled.

"Captain's right. You guys don't know how lucky you are," Esposito said, sobering.

Castle glanced up at Beckett, meeting her eyes. "Actually," he said, momentarily mesmerized by the softness in her eyes and her smile, "I do."

Yes, he knew just how lucky he was. He was amazed to the depths of his soul sometimes at how lucky he was but he knew.

For a second, he entirely forgot about their audience. He and Beckett might as well have been the only two people in the world for all he cared.

But then there was a knock on the door and the moment was over as Fallon interrupted them. "Can I talk to you two for a second?"

Castle stood up and left the room with Beckett.

"I just want you to know the US Attorney's Office is charging them with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit terror. But thanks to you two, we won't have to add the murder of innocent New Yorkers to that charge."

"Well, we were just doing our job," Beckett demurred. "Actually, I was doing my job. I don't know what the hell he was doing," she added, nudging him teasingly with her elbow.

"Hey," he protested without any heat. "But that's true," he admitted.

Fallon shot Castle a shrewdly assessing glance before looking back at Beckett. "If I were to guess, I'd say he was sticking with you, Detective."

Beckett ducked her head a little and Castle knew, although he couldn't see it since her hair was shielding his view of her face, that she would be smiling that tiny, almost shy, irrepressible smile, the one that escaped in spite of her biting her lip to hold it in. "You'd have to ask him," she murmured before looking up, her expression once more smoothed into a blandly pleasant façade.

Fallon gave her a somewhat skeptical look but didn't comment, only looked down at the floor for a moment before looking back up at them. "Listen, what I do, it's not who I am. It's just what I have to be. I hope you both understand that."

"Why don't we just say that it was a pleasure and that we hope that we don't have to do it again?" Beckett said mildly.

Fallon nodded, something like the ghost of a smile softening his expression. "Fair enough."

He gave them another nod of farewell and then strode away from them.

"If it does happen again, though, maybe you could just text me," Castle called after him, only half-joking. "Have a code word. 'Run.'"

Fallon just lifted a hand that Castle decided to assume meant a maybe.

He turned back to face Beckett to see her raising her eyebrows at him, an amused smile playing on her lips. "A code word, Castle, really?"

He shrugged. "Code words are cool."

She laughed softly and then reached out to tug lightly on his jacket. "Can we go home now?"

He would never, ever get tired of hearing Beckett refer to the loft as home. And she wanted the loft to be her home in truth soon… "I thought you'd never ask."

She smiled and turned to poke her head into the conference room. "Sir, I'm going to head out if that's all right."

Montgomery nodded and lifted his bottle in a gesture of salute. "Get out of here, Beckett, and I don't want to see you back here until Monday. Take tomorrow off."

"Thank you, sir." She nodded at the boys. "See you guys."

Espo lifted his beer in a toast and Ryan smiled and nodded. "Later."

Castle lifted a hand to wave at them through the window as he fell into step beside Beckett once she'd gathered up her things, shrugging into her jacket.

She slipped her hand into his the moment they were alone inside the elevator and he glanced at her. "It's been a hell of a day, huh?"

"Hell of a day," she echoed. "I feel like I could sleep for a week."

"You okay to drive?"

She threw him a teasing look. "Not so tired that I'll let you drive my car, Castle."

He gave her an exaggerated pout. "Not even after I saved the City?"

"Getting to drive my car is the reward you want for that? You are a strange person."

He nodded with feigned solemnity. "I pride myself on it."

She smirked at him. "Crazy man."

"Crazy about you," he shot back unthinkingly.

That earned him one of her patented eye rolls. "That was ridiculously cheesy, even by your standards."

He made a face at her. "Hey, cut me some slack. It's been a tough day."

She snorted softly. "That might be the understatement of the century," she returned but she tightened her grip on his hand and _kept on holding it_ even as they walked through the lobby of the precinct.

She kept the heat turned up high in her car and he glanced at her. "Still cold?"

She nodded. "It's better but I still feel cold inside, if that makes sense."

It made sense. "Yeah, me too." It was an internal chill, as she'd said. It wasn't the usual cold one felt because of the external temperature, the sort of cold that could be dealt with by bundling up. He felt more as if someone had taken out his internal organs and put them in a refrigerator to cool them down and then stuck them back inside his body—or something.

It wasn't long before he and Beckett were back in the empty loft where he made a beeline for the thermostat and raised the temperature.

That done, he made for his bedroom to see that Beckett had already slipped off her watch and her necklace and was starting to undress.

It occurred to him that he absolutely loved their physical ease with each other so that she didn't even glance around as he entered, just continued to strip off her clothes.

He pulled out two pairs of his thickest wool socks and then rummaged around in his dresser for an old sweatshirt of his that his mother had neatly shrunk while doing the laundry once. He handed the sweatshirt and one pair of socks to her. "Here, these should help you warm up."

She flashed him a quick smile. "Thanks. I was going to shower first."

"Okay," he agreed equably.

He turned back to dig through his drawer and became belatedly aware that she was still watching him, an odd quality in her silence now. He turned to look at her over his shoulder.

"You don't want to shower too?"

He jerked upright, feeling as if he'd been tasered. "You mean, with you? I thought… I wasn't going to… I thought you were tired," he blurted out, not quite coherently.

She hesitated. "I mean, if you don't want to… if you're too tired…"

He blinked at her. "Not that tired." He was tired—of course he was—but just the thought of showering with Kate, the memory of her body, all hot and sleek and slippery against his, had part of his body proving itself to be ready, willing, and able in the space of a few seconds.

That made her smile faintly and then she held out a hand to him. "Warm me up, Castle."

Well, if she put it like that…

He stripped hastily out of his clothes, not even caring about the faint shivers at the cold once he did so, and joined her in the shower—and proceeded to warm her up quite thoroughly.

Some time later, he crawled into bed beside her and she immediately scooted over towards him so he could wrap his arms around her, her head resting on his shoulder. Even having shrunk, his old sweatshirt still swamped her, making her look small and young, and he tightened his arms around her, protectiveness and tenderness swelling in his chest.

"Feeling better, Beckett?" he murmured.

She nodded against his shoulder. "Much," she mumbled, kissing his throat above the collar of his sweatshirt. "You're good at warming me up."

He huffed a soft laugh. "So are you."

He sensed her faint smile. And finally, lying there in his bed, with Kate snugly tucked into the circle of his arms, he felt all the stress and tension of the day dissolve, leaving him feeling drained and exhausted.

They were safe now. Safe and together and he was never going to let her go again.

"Castle?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm so glad you're okay," she mumbled sleepily.

"Me too," he murmured. Glad didn't even begin to do justice to the relief he felt at her safety but for now, it was enough.

Her breathing became deep and even and he let the soothing rhythm of it, the reassuring warmth of her body against his, lull him into sleep.

 _~To be continued…~_

A/N 2: It never made sense to me in canon that Beckett apparently recovered from hypothermia quicker than Castle did so she was already up and about when Castle had just regained consciousness. Also I looked up treatment for hypothermia and found that caffeine and alcohol should be avoided afterwards hence the decaf coffee and no beer, for which I trust Beckett will forgive me.


	23. Chapter 22: Countdown 2

Author's Note: The second chapter based on "Countdown" because it needed a longer post-ep. And I couldn't resist indulging my love of Jim Beckett's character some more. Fair warning, this is another very long chapter.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 22_

Kate dreamed of ice and fire.

Her dreams were a chaotic mélange of images, scenes.

She was back in the freezer, feeling her body going numb, leaving her trapped in an unresponsive frozen shell. Castle's hands wrapped around her loosened and then fell away. "Castle? Castle! Rick!"

He didn't respond. He didn't move.

He was gone. She knew it and she couldn't even turn to look at him, couldn't even cry or scream or anything…

And then abruptly she was running down the street, her heart racing inside her chest.

Castle. She needed to find Castle and then they needed to stop the bomb.

She screamed his name but she couldn't see him and then, suddenly, she saw the van, recognized his form.

Her legs felt rubbery from exhaustion but she had to get to him.

He turned to look at her and even though she was too far away, somehow she could see clearly the expression on his face—the consternation, the terror, the dread.

2… 1…

The world exploded around her and the last thing she was aware of was screaming, the last thing she saw was him being engulfed in flames.

She jerked awake, her breath coming hard and fast, her heart racing as if it wanted to escape her chest.

It had just been a nightmare. She was fine. Castle was fine. They were safe.

She lifted her head off Castle's shoulder. It was too dark for her to see; his face was only visible as a denser shadow but she could feel his heart beating beneath the hand resting on his chest, feel the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Her Castle.

Kate had been in danger, in life-threatening situations, before. For the most part, she was fatalistic about the dangers of the job, as cops tended to be, out of sheer necessity. But these last couple scares—the radiation scare, the freezer, the race against time to get to the bomb—had cut too close. Danger to herself, she could accept, but danger to _him_ was another thing entirely.

She hadn't allowed herself to think about it while it had all been going on, had shoved it behind a padlocked door so she could do her job, but she didn't think she'd ever been so scared as she had been these last 36 hours or so. And now that the danger was over, now that she didn't have to be the stoic Detective anymore, her terror was crashing down on her.

Oh god. She had almost lost him. They had almost lost each other.

She felt tears suddenly pricking at the back of her eyes and she bit her lip and blinked frantically to hold them back. It was _ridiculous_ to cry now when it was all over and they were safe.

But somehow the full reality of how close they had come was hitting home now, a few tears escaping in spite of herself.

And she was terrified.

This was why she'd never wanted to let anyone in, why she'd built up her wall in the first place. Why she'd been so careful to keep one foot out the door in her relationship with Will and even then, why she'd been… content… to be with Will. He'd been safe, in every sense. She'd known, mostly subconsciously, that she didn't need him; she'd cared about him, believed she could love him, but even then, she'd been able to accept with equanimity the risk she knew he faced from his job—much like the risk inherent in her job. Somehow, subconsciously, she'd known that if something happened to him, she would mourn him but she would survive.

It was… easier… to be in danger when she'd been alone. Easier when her life was almost entirely about her job, which meant that in a very real sense, she didn't have much to lose.

Now… she was so doomed.

She'd fallen in love with Castle—fallen for good, fallen forever—and she'd become part of his family, had let herself grow to love Alexis and Martha. (Well, not "let herself"—she hadn't been able to help it because Alexis was such a dear and Kate could no more have not grown to love the girl than she could sprout wings. And Martha was such an openly affectionate, free-spirited woman she, too, was hard not to care about.)

And now the thought of losing that, of losing this love, this family, this happiness she'd found terrified her to the depths of her soul.

Even now, some small part of her wanted to run for the hills, run so fast and so far from all this terrible vulnerability.

But it was too late for that.

Castle was too much a part of her now. He was in her mind, in her heart, in her veins, and she could no more push him away and try to return to her former life of safety and loneliness than she could rip out her own heart from her chest.

And when she'd thought they might die in the freezer, all she'd wanted, all she'd regretted, was the time they'd spent apart, all the weeks she'd stayed at the loft last year after her apartment had blown up resisting her attraction to him. She could have—should have—given in and kissed him senseless or let him kiss her senseless weeks, months before, could have given in to her feelings and had so much more time with him. She'd just wanted more time with him…

It was why she'd told him she didn't want to waste any more nights apart from him (she wasn't quite sure exactly when nights spent without him started to feel like a waste but they did). She'd never lived with any of her previous boyfriends, had never even wanted to. Even when she'd been with Will, she'd been fine keeping her own apartment and even preferred it that way, liked being able to have the occasional nights alone.

She wasn't that person anymore.

She wanted to sleep beside Castle every night, wanted his face to be the first one she saw every morning. She wanted breakfasts with Alexis and family dinners at the loft.

She was pulled from her thoughts when Castle stirred a little, mumbling something she couldn't quite decipher. It could have been her name but it could have been an 'okay' or something like that too; the only clear sound she'd heard was of a 'k.'

She tensed a little, wondering. Was he having a nightmare too? She knew Castle occasionally mumbled in his sleep, not always when he was having a nightmare either. She didn't want to wake him if he wasn't having a nightmare, knowing how exhausted he must be.

As she hesitated, he stirred again, his head moving restlessly. And this time, there was no doubting what he said. "No." And even in the one word, she could hear the terror in his voice.

She put her hand against his cheek. "Castle. Castle, wake up. It's okay. Castle."

He jerked awake with a gasp. "Kate?"

At another time, she might have made a quip about if he was expecting someone else to be in bed with him but that night, she couldn't. "I'm here," she said instead quietly.

He abruptly tugged her down so she was lying half on top of him, his arms wrapping around her, as he buried his face in her hair. "Kate…"

She wrapped her arm around him as much as she could, her other hand still cupping his cheek. "I'm fine, Castle. We're both fine."

He let out a shuddering breath. "I was dreaming…" He trailed off but the bleakness in his voice told her enough.

Silence settled over them for a few minutes, silence in which he was apparently quite content just to hold her (and she was content to be held), but then eventually, he broke it by saying, "I'm sorry if I woke you up."

"You didn't wake me up."

He drew back a little and she sensed, although she couldn't see, his gaze sharpen as he looked at her. "Did you have a nightmare too?"

"I'm okay now," she answered him rather obliquely.

He sighed. "You should wake me up when you have a nightmare."

"I would have if I'd needed to," she placated. It wasn't exactly untrue, she told herself; she was well accustomed to dealing with her nightmares alone and she was almost always able to rationalize her nightmares away.

He snorted a little. "No, you wouldn't. The little girl who refused to have a nightlight because it was a point of pride to stare down the dark rather than admit to fear wouldn't wake someone else up because of a nightmare. You'd just stare it down."

She felt herself flush and was glad it was too dark for him to see. On second thought, maybe it wasn't so nice that her dad and Castle got along so well. "My dad talks too much," was all she said, although she was honest enough to admit that Castle wasn't wrong. (Of course he wasn't wrong. He knew her. Too well, she sometimes thought.)

He drew her head back down to rest on his shoulder, smoothing his hand down her hair. "I hate to break it to you, Beckett, but it's not like your dad told me anything I wouldn't have already guessed just from knowing you."

"Have I ever told you that it's a little annoying that you know me so well?" she huffed with disgruntlement that was only half-feigned.

He affected a beleaguered sigh. "It's a curse, being so brilliant."

She snorted and poked his side, making him yelp and squirm. "Ego much, Castle?" she asked tartly.

"Smart enough to keep up with you so I must be brilliant."

A soft laugh escaped her almost in spite of herself. "Flatterer."

"'s not flattery," he defended.

She turned her small smile into his shoulder, even knowing he couldn't see it. She didn't know how he did it but somehow, he could always make her smile and make her heart flutter too.

What would she do if she ever lost him?

The thought pierced through her amusement and she abruptly tightened her arms around him, one of her hands clutching his shoulder as if she thought he might vanish if she didn't hold on to him.

"Kate?"

She had to swallow the lump of emotion that formed in her throat at the quick concern and tenderness in his voice. It was irrational and unlike her but her emotions were running too close to the surface after the day they had had. "I was so scared, Castle," she finally whispered. "I thought I'd lost you." She had, in the terrible few minutes after she had woken up in the ambulance to realize that she was alive and that Castle wasn't there and Eli hadn't been able to tell her anything about how Castle was, if he had survived as well.

And as terrible and selfish and morbid as it sounded, in the last couple seconds of staring at the timer ticking down on the bomb, the last clear thought she remembered in the haze of terror and dread was that at least, she and Castle were together. At least she would not need to face a life without him in it.

He wrapped his arms around her, gathering her in until she was half lying on top of him, her legs tangled with his, and she felt him press a kiss to her forehead. "I know, Kate," he murmured soothingly. "I know. It's okay, sweetheart."

A flare of warmth settled in her chest at the word. She never would have expected to like being called by an endearment so much but there was something amazingly comforting about it, something wonderful about the very ease with which the word slipped from his lips.

She felt him smooth his hand down her hair in a calming, repetitive motion, stroking her rather as if she were a pet. (She'd never realized that having someone stroke her hair could be so comforting but he had, somehow, guessed it in one of those insights that made her think he might know her better than she knew herself.) She felt as if all the last lingering bits of tension and fear in her body were being dissolved with every touch of his hand.

She sighed and relaxed, turning her head to nuzzle her nose into the curve where his neck met his shoulder, breathing in the familiar, reassuring scent of him.

She wasn't sure how much time passed but it was long enough that she started to feel drowsiness settling over her again.

"Better?" he murmured, his voice hardly above a breath.

"Mm hmm."

"Try and sleep, Kate. I'll be right here with you."

She wriggled, resettling herself more comfortably against him, but still snugly nestled in the circle of his arms and the safe haven of his body.

He was safe. Safe and solid and warm.

And soon enough, she drifted asleep, lulled by the steady cadence of his heartbeat beneath her hand resting on his chest.

* * *

When Kate woke up again, it was morning.

She blinked her eyes open, squinting a little against the sunlight that was sneaking in around the drawn curtains.

She lifted her head so she could see the clock on the nightstand on his side of the bed and then blinked again. It was nearly 7:30. Not very late, given everything, but still later than she normally woke up. She really must have been tired.

Castle was still sleeping soundly, which she was glad to see. There was the faintest curve of his lips that made it seem as if he was having pleasant dreams and she smiled softly, her heart warming inside her chest. He was so… cute when he was sleeping, with his features relaxed, his face rough with stubble, and his hair a mess (although she tried never to let him catch her watching him sleep because he always smirked in his smuggest fashion when he caught her).

She knew he was tired and she didn't want to disturb him so she carefully wriggled her way out from under his encircling arm and then equally carefully made her way to the bathroom.

They had the loft to themselves so Kate decided not to bother getting dressed yet (and opening up her drawer to rummage around for clothes would likely disturb Castle's sleep) so she padded quietly out of his bedroom, leaving Castle to sleep.

She retrieved the newspaper from the front door and then settled on a stool at the kitchen island to skim through it while Castle's complicated gourmet coffee maker finished percolating.

It was weird and surreal after the drama and excitement of the last day to read the news and see no mention of the bomb threat, no mention of a threatened terrorist attack. To think of the City moving on, in blithe ignorance, of how close it had come to another attack that would have been on the front page of every newspaper in the country for weeks. Strange to read about the world going on as if nothing had happened—because for them, nothing _had_ happened.

There was a small blurb in the Metro section about the bomb disposal unit being called out to inspect the van but it was drastically played-down. The captain of the bomb disposal unit who was interviewed only stated, cryptically, that they'd been following a lead out of an abundance of caution. There was no mention of either Agent Fallon or the DHS or the fact that the bomb had been very real. It was essentially written off as a false alarm and nothing more.

Well, Kate thought, that was in a sense what the end goal of law enforcement was, not to get public recognition but simply to allow people to go on living their lives in peace.

She prepared her first cup of coffee and sipped it as she finished skimming through the paper. There were a few articles in the sports section about the Mets and the Yankees, since baseball's spring training had just started, which she read.

That finished, she made herself another cup of coffee, glancing over towards Castle's bedroom, although the utter silence from that direction led her to be fairly sure that Castle was still sleeping. Although she expected he would wake up any minute as it was already after 8.

She rolled up the sleeves of Castle's sweatshirt which she was positively drowning in so they wouldn't get in the way and busied herself with making scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, smiling to herself at the memory of another morning in the loft, almost exactly a year ago, and making breakfast the morning after her old apartment had exploded. In spite of the intensity of that case, in spite of the trauma of her apartment exploding around her, in spite of everything, somehow she couldn't help but have rather fond memories from that time. It was why she'd first moved into the loft. It had been, in a real sense, the start of everything, the start of her really falling in love with Castle. If anyone had told her on that morning that a year later she would be at the loft again making breakfast after having just left Castle in his bed, she would have scoffed and deemed the person to have an imagination that put Castle's to shame. And yet, here she was.

As she'd predicted, the smell of bacon did wake Castle up and he emerged from his office, shrugging into his robe, rubbing a hand down his face in one of his characteristic and endearingly youthful gestures.

"G'morning, Beckett." He slid onto a stool and accepted the cup of coffee she handed him, taking a quick sip and then pausing to steal a piece of bacon from the plate. "Mm, this is like every man's dream, waking up to find a beautiful woman cooking in his kitchen."

She tossed him a smirk. "Really, Castle? That's what you want, to have a little woman, barefoot and cooking in your kitchen?"

"You forgot pregnant," he shot back.

She choked. "Castle!" Pregnant! Even in jest, he'd never yet brought up that word, never mentioned the subject of kids, and now he'd just gone and thrown it out there as if… as if he'd actually thought about it. He might have been joking but was there—had there been a little kernel of truth in the joke?

He belatedly seemed to realize what he'd said and his eyes flared wide with sudden dismay. "That's not—I mean—I'm not—I wasn't—I didn't mean to say that," he stammered not at all coherently and then apparently gave up and added, hurriedly, "I haven't even finished my first coffee yet. You can't hold me accountable for anything I say before I've had my coffee!"

His wide-eyed, stumbling panic had her heart softening and, oddly, calmed down her initial reaction. "Don't look so scared, Castle. I'm not going to freak out on you." (She hoped.) She paused and then found herself blurting out before she'd quite realized she was going to, "Do you want more kids?" She knew how much Castle adored Alexis but he'd never mentioned or indicated that he'd ever thought about having more kids. He hadn't, as far as she knew, even considered having kids with Gina. What if he didn't want to go through the dirty diapers and sleepless nights and toddler tantrums again?

Oh god, were they really about to have this conversation? Now? This morning, with her standing in his kitchen wearing sweats and an old sweatshirt of his, and holding a greasy fork?

Then again, when did they ever do things like a normal couple? They bonded over dead bodies and murders.

It was his turn to choke a little on air, his eyes flaring wide again. "I—uh—I mean, I'm not… opposed to the idea…" he hedged awkwardly. "I don't know what you want and I don't—I mean, I have Alexis and it's up to you but I, um, I've thought about it…" he stuttered to a halt.

He had thought about it. He was all but tripping over his own words in trying not to assume anything but he had thought about it and he wasn't opposed to the idea, which meant that he did want more kids. He wanted kids with her.

Oh god.

A whole horde of butterflies suddenly materialized in her stomach.

She felt herself flush. "I—I've never really been a baby person," she admitted truthfully. Unlike Lanie, who had been known to break off mid-sentence in order to coo over babies she saw when they went out shopping or out to eat. "And with my job and everything, I've never considered a baby as even being a possibility."

He tried—she could see he tried—to mask his reaction but his expression fell almost imperceptibly.

"I'm not saying no," she quickly added. While it was true that she'd never seriously thought about having a baby before, things were different now. She was different. Part of her was terrified at the idea of bringing a baby into the world of danger and darkness that she lived in but then she thought about Castle and he made what had always before seemed impossible seem not just possible but… desirable.

"I'm… I'm not ready yet but I think…" her breath was coming fast and shallow, "someday I think I'll want…"

"Your own kids?" he supplied quietly.

"No. Yours."

The words were too blunt but they were true. She still wasn't sure about having kids in the abstract but kids with Castle… To see Castle with their own kids… She thought about the way he was with Alexis, the times when he looked at Alexis with so much real, unconditional love it was almost painful to see. Yes, she wanted to see Castle look at their baby like that someday…

He expelled his breath as if he'd been punched and then he was abruptly sliding off the stool and coming around the island to haul her into his arms as they closed around her with enough force to push the breath from her lungs.

He drew back after a minute, just enough to look at her, his eager gaze searching her face. "Kate… I—you—really?"

She felt herself flush, her heart fluttering madly in her chest. Oh god, oh god. Was she, Kate Beckett, really doing this? She forced herself to meet his eyes—and the thought darted into her head that she hoped their baby had his eyes, that deep ocean blue. Paradoxically, the thought calmed her a little. She did want kids with him. She remembered abruptly what Maddy had said when they'd had dinner at Rocco's last spring. She wanted little Castle babies. "Yes, really."

He shut his eyes for a moment and then opened them again, so much happiness in his expression that she could only think it looked like a sunrise. "Oh god, Kate…" His voice shook a little from emotion, so much emotion it almost made her chest ache. He wanted kids with her more than she'd even dreamed.

"I'm not sure what kind of mother I'll be," she blurted out, suddenly needing to do or say something to relieve the emotions building up inside her.

"You're going to be a great mom," he responded as positively as if he were stating an immutable truth of the universe, as if he was affirming that the earth revolved around the sun.

She couldn't quite help a faint smile. He had so much faith in her and it never failed to lift her heart, even as it terrified her a little that she would end up disappointing him. She wanted to be the person he thought she already was. "How can you be so sure?"

"I've seen you with Alexis, remember, and you're great with her."

"Alexis is practically a grown-up and I haven't been trying to be her mom."

He grimaced. "Don't remind me of how fast Alexis is growing up." He sobered. "It's not just Alexis, though. I saw you with Tyler Donegal and with little Angela Candela a couple years ago and you made them feel comfortable and safe." He paused. "I don't say it'll always be easy and in a lot of ways, no one is ever really ready for what being a parent will be like but I don't doubt for a second that you'll be a good mom."

"Someday, I hope so."

He bent and kissed her, softly, lingeringly, and then he drew back, the widest, brightest grin she could remember seeing in a long time on his face as he abruptly released her to throw his arms up in the air in a gesture of jubilation. "Best morning ever!" he proclaimed with characteristic overdramatic excitement.

She couldn't help but laugh, even as she felt her heart flutter. "Really, Castle?"

He grinned at her and planted a quick, smacking kiss on her lips. "Kate Beckett just told me she wants to have my babies one day. Did you really think that wouldn't be the best thing I've heard since the day you told me you loved me?"

Oh, Castle. She felt a surge of love so powerful her chest almost physically hurt, as if her heart had grown too large to be contained inside it. She had made him so happy… "I didn't know it would mean so much to you."

He abruptly sobered in one of his lightning-quick changes of mood. "I want everything with you, Kate."

She slid her arms around his waist and smiled up at him. "Let's see what Alexis says about my moving in first before we start talking about 'everything.' We have time." Yes, they had more time. Thanks to the boys saving them and to Castle, they'd been given more time.

She kissed the little hollow of his clavicle, a spot she loved. "Thank you, Castle."

"For what?"

"For saving me, for saving us."

She knew what he was going to say before he said it and mouthed the word along with him. "Always."

It was a promise, one she made no less than him. She would have his back, just as she knew he would have hers.

They smiled into each other's eyes for a long minute and then he dropped a quick kiss on the tip of her nose. "Let's eat breakfast."

She laughed softly but followed his lead and they both settled onto the stools at the island, not bothering to make separate plates but sharing the scrambled eggs and bacon companionably.

They ate in silence but were seated close enough that their shoulders brushed and occasionally, their eyes met and they'd exchange small smiles and Kate couldn't help but think that after all, they didn't need words to communicate.

The quiet of the meal was abruptly broken a few minutes later as they heard the sound of the front door of the loft being unlocked and they only had time to exchange surprised looks.

Oh god. She was still wearing Castle's sweatshirt, Kate realized. She'd always been so careful to preserve boundaries, even if Alexis knew perfectly well that Kate slept in Castle's bedroom now, and never left Castle's bedroom less than fully dressed after the first (mortifying) morning when Alexis had caught her coming out of Castle's bedroom and her dad had never seen her wearing a boyfriend's clothes, but now she'd been fairly caught. She didn't even have time to blush before Martha, Alexis, and her own dad came streaming in.

"Dad!" Alexis ran across the loft and threw herself at Castle with enough force to make him grunt as he hugged her.

"I'm fine, Alexis," he assured her but he kept his arms around her, holding her as if he hadn't seen her in weeks.

And then Kate was distracted as she'd reached her father, meeting him halfway across the loft. "Dad."

"Oh, Katie…" Her dad pulled her into a lingering hug and clutched her to him with more desperate emotion than she remembered feeling in her dad's embrace in years, telling her just how worried about her he had been.

She returned his hug, closing her eyes. She was so glad to have her dad back. She had missed her dad's hugs in those years he'd been lost at the bottom of a bottle and even now, in spite of how much their relationship had changed, one of her dad's hugs still had something of the same effect as they used to when she was little, when she'd still been convinced that nothing could hurt her as long as her dad was around. It wasn't the same, could never be the same, but he was still her _dad_.

Her dad drew back after a long minute but only far enough so he could hold her face between his hands and meet her eyes, as he occasionally did. "You're really okay, Katie-girl?"

She met her dad's eyes and smiled. "I really am, Dad."

He studied her for a moment longer. Her dad knew her too well for her to be able to lie with any ease to his face (although Kate was guiltily conscious that she'd become much better at concealing her emotions from him over the phone to keep from worrying him). And then his own expression eased, some of the tension receding. "Thank God."

Kate kept her arm around her father as she turned to walk with him back towards the kitchen. "I wasn't expecting you back so early, Dad."

Castle had one arm each around Alexis and Martha but he released his mother to hold his hand out to Jim. "Jim, it's good to see you."

Jim took Castle's hand but used it to tug Castle into a half-hug. "Thank you, Rick. For everything."

Alexis hugged Kate in her turn. "I'm so glad you're okay, Kate," the girl murmured.

Kate returned Alexis's hug. "Thanks, Alexis. I'm sorry you were so worried but your dad and I are both fine."

"Thank goodness for that!" Martha declared with trademark drama as the moment Alexis released her, Kate found herself being pulled into Martha's embrace. "We were all so worried about you both that we simply had to hurry back and see you for ourselves."

"You must have left the Hamptons at dawn, Mother," Castle rejoined. "I wasn't expecting you to get back until this afternoon."

Martha pinned him with a look. "Honestly, Richard, did you really think that any of us would have been able to sleep well when we were still so worried about you and Katherine? Alexis wanted to head back to the City last night."

Castle had tugged Alexis back into his arms and he turned to look down at her. "But I told you I was fine and it was all over."

"It's not the same, just hearing it over the phone." Alexis's voice wavered slightly. "I was really scared, Dad."

Castle's expression changed as he tugged Alexis into his arms again, kissing her hair. "I know, I'm sorry, pumpkin. But I really am fine." He glanced up and met Kate's eyes. "Kate and I are both all right and not hurt at all."

Alexis nodded against his shoulder. "I know that now, Dad, but I needed to see you."

"I think you should really blame me, Rick," her dad chimed in. "I was the one who was so anxious about Katie that I practically insisted that we leave once the sun was up today."

"Nonsense, Jim," Martha inserted. "We were all just as eager to leave as you were."

Castle briefly met Kate's eyes before pressing a kiss to Alexis's hair, although he looked at Martha. "Well, since you're here, there's no point in wondering who decided to leave so early. Did you even have breakfast with leaving so early? We have coffee and we can make some more eggs and bacon."

Martha waved a hand at him and moved to the island and flourished a white box that had until now been unnoticed in the flurry of greeting and reassurances. "No need, Richard. We brought breakfast with us."

Castle's expression lit up. "You stopped off at Margaretta's?" he exclaimed.

"It was my idea," Alexis piped up.

Castle gave her a quick approving grin. "Good girl. I've trained you well."

Alexis managed a smile that looked almost entirely cheerful. "I wanted to have one of their muffins."

"Well, now we'll have a feast," Castle responded. "Go sit down, pumpkin. You want orange juice?" He turned to Jim. "Would you like coffee, Jim?"

"I'll get it, Dad," Kate volunteered and gestured for her dad to sit down at the dining room table.

Kate, Castle, and Martha took care of getting things ready for breakfast.

"You're in for a treat, Kate," Castle said as he puttered around the kitchen. "Margaretta's is the best bakery I've ever been to."

"It's in the Hamptons?" Kate asked as she poured a cup of coffee for her dad and brought it over to the table along with utensils.

Alexis threw Castle a reproachful look. "Dad, you didn't take Kate to Margaretta's last summer when you guys were out there?"

Castle grimaced a little, looking suitably chastened. "I'm sorry, Kate, I was a terrible host last summer. It completely slipped my mind."

Kate gave him a quick, forgiving smile. "Oh, I wouldn't say you were a terrible host, Castle. Most of my memories of that week revolve around you feeding me lots of great food anyway so I don't think I was missing much." (At least, those of her memories that were appropriate to mention in front of Alexis, Martha, and her dad.)

"You only say that because you haven't tried Margaretta's yet," Castle told her as he sat down at the table.

Kate smiled and then their attention was drawn to Martha, who was lightly tapping her fork against her glass.

"I think this calls for a toast. Thank goodness that Richard and Katherine are safe."

"Hear hear," Jim murmured and lifted his mug of coffee.

They all clinked their respective cups and Castle's eyes met Kate's for a moment and for a second, she saw a faint echo of the soul-deep relief and gladness she'd seen in his expression just after he had defused the bomb.

Then he blinked and smiled and the moment was gone.

Kate turned back to her dad to see that he, for one, had noticed the fleeting moment of silent communication between her and Castle and he gave her a quick, pleased and somewhat knowing smile that made Kate flush. She was glad to turn her attention to the white pastry box, looking inside it to see that it was full of baked goods, enough to feed the entire Homicide division at the 12th. She noted croissants, muffins, danishes, apple turnovers, and _pain au chocolat_ , a veritable breakfast feast.

"Oh, wow, all this looks great."

"Everything's delicious," Alexis assured her. "So pick whatever you want." So saying, Alexis reached in and took a muffin to be followed by Martha and then her dad and then Kate, who settled on an apple turnover.

She took one bite and closed her eyes, abruptly deciding that this might be even better than Castle's strawberry pancakes.

"Oh my God, this is delicious." She threw Castle a look of mock indignation. "I've changed my mind, Castle. You definitely owe me a big apology for not letting me try this last summer."

Castle lifted his hands in a gesture of exaggerated surrender. "I'm sorry, Kate. In fairness, Margaretta's is on Long Island so I don't always remember to go there when I'm in the Hamptons."

"Don't listen to him, Kate," Alexis told her with a teasing look at Castle. "We've been going to Margaretta's every year since we first got the house in the Hamptons."

" _Et tu_ , Alexis?" Castle huffed, making a disgruntled face. "And that's not fair because it's usually you who reminds me and this last summer, you deserted me for that summer program of yours."

Kate couldn't quite help but laugh. "Okay, Castle, I get it. You can make it up to me by taking me to this Margaretta's the next time we go out to the Hamptons."

"Done," Castle agreed promptly.

"That's all very well, Richard," Martha spoke up. "But I think the bigger concern here is not with our breakfast but what happened to you and Katherine yesterday. You haven't told us anything."

"Yes. What exactly was going on, Katie? How bad was it?" her dad interposed as well.

Kate looked at Castle and he looked at her and she knew they were both mentally reviewing the events of the last day and how to summarize it or even what to include at all. She expected Castle to speak up—he was the storyteller, after all—but saw him nod at her almost imperceptibly and read in his expression that he would let her tell the story. Her heart pinched inside her, a surge of emotion swamping her chest. He trusted her and somehow the thought struck her as being profound. He trusted her to judge what to tell his mother and, more importantly, his daughter too. Even for something like this, when she knew how much he tried to protect Alexis from harsh realities, he trusted her.

Kate turned to look at Martha and then Alexis and then her dad. "It was a tough case," she finally temporized. Which was the understatement of the century.

"This was about that cab driver, right, Katherine?" Martha asked.

Kate hesitated and then answered, "Sort of. He was killed because one of his other cab drivers was part of a conspiracy planning to set off an explosion in the city."

"I knew it. I knew it had to be a bomb threat," Alexis blurted out, her voice higher than usual, sounding anxious all over again. "It was going to be a big explosion too, wasn't it? I knew it had to be bad with how worried Dad looked."

Out of the corner of her eye, Kate saw Castle reach out to cover Alexis's hand with his in a calming gesture.

Kate forced a small smile for the girl's benefit. "It's all right, Alexis. Your dad saved us, saved the City. We found the bomb in plenty of time to stop it," she lied. There was no way she would ever let on to either her dad or Alexis or Martha just how close it had been or that it had not been a conventional explosive device. This story was bad enough as it was. "All the conspirators are in jail and it's all over and we're fine, thanks to your dad," she added. She had decided that emphasizing Castle's role would be the quickest way to distract from the frightening reality, even as expurgated as the story was. It had the added benefit of being true since she didn't like the feeling of lying to these people she loved so much.

Alexis turned to look at Castle. "Oh, Dad, really?"

Kate's throat suddenly felt tight at the expression in Alexis's eyes. She knew, of course, that for all Alexis teased Castle, the girl adored her father and in Alexis's eyes, she saw just how much Alexis looked up to her father, that Castle really was a hero to Alexis. It was, Kate thought, much like her own parents had been heroes to her too when she had been growing up, when the young Katie had wanted to be just like her mom and had believed that her dad was the best man in the world. Her mom still was her hero in many ways but Kate had lost that faith in her own dad. She felt a pang of guilt at the thought, reminded herself that whatever else, she had her dad back and she _was_ proud of him for overcoming his demons. On the thought, she looked over at her dad to meet his eyes and then deliberately shifted her chair closer to his so she could slip her arm around his shoulders.

Castle bridled in exaggerated offense. "Your surprise is not flattering, daughter of mine. Don't you believe I can be a hero?"

"I didn't know you knew how to stop a bomb," Alexis returned with an attempt at her usual expression when giving Castle a hard time that fell somewhat flat.

"Watching every episode of _Macgyver_ was an education in itself," Castle quipped.

Kate made a show of fake-coughing and rolled her eyes, mostly for Alexis's benefit, although she had to sternly bite back her indulgent smile. Silly, ridiculous man. _Her_ silly, ridiculous man.

He threw her a look of mock reproach before addressing Alexis again. "Bob wants to give us a medal."

"Bob?" her dad asked in some confusion.

"Mayor Weldon," Kate explained. "You remember I told you that Castle is friends with him."

"Oh, yes, of course," her dad nodded.

"I'm thinking of wearing the medal wherever I go, flash it around like a police badge," Castle mused with exaggerated ponderousness.

"Don't worry, Alexis," Kate spoke up teasingly. "If he tries it, he'll see how fast I can twist his ear." She didn't believe for a moment that Castle would do any such thing, even in the somewhat unlikely event that the Mayor gave him a medal for this weekend, but she knew perfectly well he was deliberately being silly to assuage their family's worry.

Castle pulled a theatrical pout and their efforts were awarded as the sound of Alexis's laughter pealed out.

Martha joined in as well by applauding lightly. "I knew you'd be good at keeping Richard in line, Katherine."

Castle huffed in mock disgruntlement and addressed Jim with exaggerated pleading. "You see what I have to put up with, being so outnumbered by the women in my life. Help me out, Jim."

Kate glanced at her dad to see the faint upwards quirk of his lips. "Oh, I'm well used to being outnumbered by women but I'm afraid you're on your own, Rick. I learned a long time ago that it's not smart to go up against Katie and I get the impression Alexis is just as whip-smart. Besides, Katie does have a gun, you know."

Castle threw up his hands in a melodramatic gesture of surrender. "Clearly, I'm doomed, surrounded and outnumbered by strong-willed women."

They all laughed at Castle's histrionics and the lingering tension in the atmosphere from worry was cleared allowing the conversation to become more general.

Martha, with her own worry eased, had regained much of her usual flair and between her and Alexis, now seeming to be almost entirely restored to herself, kept up a lively conversation that somehow managed to include them all.

Kate caught her father's occasional surprised glance at Martha and suppressed the urge to smile. She'd been rather curious to see what her quiet, reserved father would make of Martha. Martha had been away on tour last summer when her father had visited the Hamptons and then the evening last month when he had come over to the loft for dinner, Martha had already had plans so there had only been time to introduce Martha to her father before Martha had swanned out.

The rest of breakfast passed quickly and Kate found herself thinking that it was both remarkable and absolutely unremarkable at the same time how very much like a family meal it was. She was used to these Castle family meals now, loved them. But she was a little surprised—and then felt silly for being surprised—at how easily the family atmosphere shifted and grew to encompass her dad as well. It was a testament to how warmly affectionate all the Castle family were—and the extent to which the last day of shared worry would have bonded her father, Martha, and Alexis. She of all people knew how going through stressful times together broke down natural barriers of reserve or distance between people.

After breakfast was over, Kate volunteered to drive her dad back to his apartment.

She hadn't failed to notice her dad's glances at her both over breakfast and afterwards before they were on their way and so she wasn't surprised when, after a few minutes of silence, her dad began, "You seem very much at home at Rick's place, Katie-girl. Do I need to sit him down and ask his intentions?" he asked teasingly.

Kate felt herself blushing hotly. She should have known her dad would comment, albeit somewhat obliquely, on finding her wearing Castle's clothing and the fact that she had disappeared into Castle's bedroom to change before they'd left. Her dad might not have been under any delusions about the nature of her physical relationship with Castle but she really could have done without showing him such visible evidence of it.

"Dad! No, you don't have to do any such thing." Not that she really thought he would. Her dad might have perfected a very good threateningly stern father routine for the benefit of Kate's boyfriends in high school but that had been years ago, almost another lifetime ago—and it had been a different Kate and a different version of her dad too.

Her dad only laughed at her discomfiture. "At ease, Katie. You know I like Rick."

Which reminded her… "You had to tell Castle the story about how I didn't want to have a night light when I was little?"

"Rick didn't seem all that surprised by the story anyway, Katie," her dad responded mildly. "I'm sure that Rick knows you pretty well."

She smiled, almost in spite of herself. "He does," she confirmed softly.

She felt her dad's gaze studying her face for a moment before he said quietly, "You're happy with Rick, Katie-girl."

It wasn't a question.

She briefly took her eyes off the road just long enough to meet her dad's eyes. "Yes."

"Even after what sounds like a harrowing couple of days, you still look cheerful, Katie. That tells me a lot."

"Castle and I… we're doing well," she said, rather lamely.

Her dad chuckled softly. "From what I saw this morning, I would say that's something of an understatement."

She blushed again. (Damn it, why weren't people blessed with the ability to control their blushes?) "Dad!"

Her dad laughed outright. "All right, Katie, I'll stop teasing." He paused and then said, his tone entirely serious now, "I'm glad you have Rick in your life, Katie. I know you have a hard job and I worry about that but I do feel better knowing you have Rick to look after you."

She sobered and for once, after the way Castle had saved her—saved the entire City—she didn't take issue with her dad's phrasing it as Castle looking after her. She could generally take care of herself but she also knew that she wouldn't have managed to get through this case without him. "He does help. He makes things easier," she admitted quietly. He really did. She couldn't imagine what the aftermath of this case would have been like for her if she and Castle had not been together, if she had needed to return to her apartment alone after all they'd been through. She would have gotten through it; she always had before—but being able to go home to the loft with Castle, being held by him, having Castle to banish the cold and make her smile, meant more than she could say. "I—it still scares me sometimes, Dad, how much I've come to rely on him," she blurted out in a rush before she'd quite realized she was going to.

Her dad sighed a little. "I know, Katie. It is a frightening thing, to place so much of our hopes and happiness in another person, but I can tell you that it's worth it."

"I know."

Kate neatly pulled over to the curb and parked her car. It was still a couple blocks away from her dad's place but they could walk the distance easily and she was too much of a New Yorker not to grab a spot whenever she spotted one.

She knew better than to try to take her dad's small suitcase so she only fell into step beside him. "So what did you think of Martha, Dad?" she asked, wanting to change the subject to something less emotionally fraught.

"She appears to be a very dynamic woman," her dad observed diplomatically.

Kate smiled. "Yes, she certainly is that. Martha can be a little… overwhelming on first meeting her. Did you like her?"

"Yesterday was an unusual situation, to say the least, so Martha and I never really interacted as we might have if we'd been meeting under more normal circumstances because of your relationship with Rick. I get the impression that Martha and I are very different people and from all you've told me about her, I already know that she and I come from entirely different worlds," her dad began thoughtfully.

Kate slipped her arm into her dad's. "I hope you and Martha will be friends, Dad." She wasn't naïve enough to expect that it wouldn't potentially cause some awkwardness, if not outright disagreements, between her and Castle if, for any reason, their parents didn't get along. It might not be a serious impediment to her and Castle's relationship but it certainly wouldn't help. Especially because of how close Castle and Martha were.

And aside from that, she wanted her father and Martha to get along because she herself had grown to care about Martha so much.

"Well, we've already bonded over our mutual worry for our children and I must say I'm inclined to think well of Martha simply because she appeared to be almost as worried about you as she was about Rick so I don't think you need to worry that Martha and I won't be friends."

"I'm glad because Martha and Castle are very close."

"And you and Martha have grown closer too, I know, Katie. I could tell that from the way you talk about Martha and she certainly appears to be very fond of you."

Kate smiled. "Martha's been great. She's very open-hearted and she's been so supportive of me and my relationship with Castle since the beginning."

"I'm glad, Katie. You deserve to be welcomed into a family with open arms as the wonderful person you are and you seem to have found that."

Kate bit her lip a little. "I've brought a lot of worry and fear into their lives, Dad. I'm not so sure that Martha and Alexis should welcome me with open arms. Before Castle started working with me, Martha and Alexis didn't need to worry about his safety so much."

Her dad turned to fix her with a rather stern look. "Now, Katie, none of that. You seem to be forgetting that Rick is a grown man who's responsible for his own decisions. You certainly didn't ask for Rick to start working with you and Rick has chosen to keep working with you. You're not accountable for Rick's choices and I'm sure both his mother and his daughter know that. And Katie, you talk as if all you've added to their lives is worry but you've also made Rick happy and I'm sure that matters more to Martha and Alexis than anything else."

She remembered Castle's words when she had tried to push him away after she'd found out about Hal Lockwood—or whatever his name was—following her. _I'm not in danger because of you; I'm in danger because of me. It's my choice to stay with you._ And what Agent Fallon had said just the day before, that Castle had been sticking with her in doing what he did. It had been obvious even to Agent Fallon that Castle's loyalty to her and their partnership had been his primary motivation in doing what he did to save the City. Not that he wouldn't have done it even if he'd been entirely indifferent to her but she also knew that he wasn't capable of letting anyone he loved face danger alone. She loved him for his steadfast loyalty, even as it terrified her. She simultaneously, irrationally, wanted Castle to be safe, return to his privileged, sheltered life as a multi-millionaire and desperately wanted to cling to their partnership at work too, hated the thought of working without him beside her.

But she remembered his smile that morning, the way his eyes had lit up as if illuminated from within. She remembered all his smiles, the times she'd made him laugh. Somehow, amazingly, she did make him happy, perhaps even as happy as he made her.

And the thought, the reminder, of Castle's smile made it easy for her to smile at her dad, the shadow of guilt and fear lifting at least for now. "You're right, Dad."

Her dad returned her smile. "I do love it when you admit I'm right about something, Katie-girl," he teased. "It doesn't happen nearly often enough anymore."

She laughed as she knew he wanted her to as they resumed their walk towards his apartment building.

They were silent for a few minutes but then her dad said, quietly, "Your mom would like Martha too."

Kate's smile was a little watery. "I know she would have." It was true. Johanna and Martha might not have had much at all in common but her mom would have thought Martha was a riot with her exuberant stories of life in the theatre, would have liked Martha's generosity and warm-heartedness.

"And it goes without saying that your mom would have adored Alexis," her dad added somewhat more cheerfully.

Kate managed a real smile at the mention of Alexis. "Alexis is a dear."

"Yes, she's a good girl." Which, coming from her dad, was about as high a praise as he could give.

"Castle's done a good job with her."

"And so have you," her dad noted to her surprise.

"I haven't…" she began.

"Alexis and I had some time to talk yesterday evening after we were assured that you and Rick were both safe and she told me how much she appreciates that you've always been willing to talk to her about anything, whether it be school or friends or her boyfriend."

"I care about Alexis too," Kate said simply. Oh, she did love that girl. Somehow it hadn't occurred to her that Alexis and her father would have talked about her, which, in hindsight, seemed silly.

"I'm proud of you, Katie."

"For what?"

"It's not easy to date someone who has a child and it's especially challenging when the parent and child are as close as Rick and Alexis are but you've forged your own relationship with Alexis and found a balance so that Alexis doesn't feel left out or neglected because of her father's relationship with you and I know that can't have been entirely easy but you've done it."

It hadn't been easy, at least not always, but at the same time… "I didn't really need to do that much, Dad. It's mostly Castle because he's always been clear that Alexis is still his priority and he's tried hard to spend as much time with her as ever." He never spent the night at her apartment without making sure that Martha would be home that night and letting Alexis know before hand and he always returned to the loft early enough to have breakfast with Alexis before she left for school. He tried to keep up all of his and Alexis's father-daughter traditions and there had been a few times that he'd nearly twisted himself into knots trying to explain to Kate that he wanted to spend time with Alexis alone and it had been left to Kate to explain that she understood and didn't mind at all. And as for her own relationship with Alexis, Kate honestly did care about Alexis for herself, entirely aside from her being Castle's daughter so it wasn't difficult to spend time with Alexis.

"That's to Rick's credit as well but you're still the one who's made Alexis feel so comfortable with you."

"Only a monster wouldn't be nice to Alexis, I think," she demurred. But then, she supposed that wasn't exactly true either, remembering what Alexis had told her about growing up as the daughter of a single father. About Gina, who'd been nice to Alexis only as long as Gina was getting along with Castle but then had dropped Alexis entirely. Of course, Kate was still very much with Castle so it behooved her to get along with Alexis but Kate could acquit herself of being nice to Alexis only for that reason.

"Well, be that as it may, Alexis appears to care about you a great deal."

"It's easy to care about Alexis," Kate smiled softly.

"I'm happy for you, Katie."

"Thanks, Dad. Castle's family has been… great." She couldn't say to her father that being part of Castle's family meant more to her because of the family life she had lost when her mom had died because even now, when she had her dad back, it wasn't the same. She didn't think her relationship with her dad would ever really be the same—she wasn't the same person she had been and her dad was changed too—but Kate would sooner have been shot than admit that to her dad. "I tease Castle sometimes by telling him that I like his family more than I like him," she added instead.

Her dad laughed. "At the very least, I can vouch for the fact that you certainly liked his family _sooner_ than you liked Rick. I remember the way you praised Alexis even as you were still complaining about Rick being the irritating thorn in your side at work."

"Oh, Castle knows that too," Kate assured her father laughingly.

They had reached her father's door and he turned to wrap his arms around her, kissing her cheek. "Thanks for driving me home, Katie."

"Of course, Dad. Lunch as usual next weekend?" she asked. She and her dad met up every other weekend without fail, a tradition that had started when her dad had set off on the long road to recovery and which continued even now, although in those first months of her dad's recovery, they had met every weekend. It was only in the last couple years, not long before the advent of Castle in fact, that she and her dad had changed their routine to meeting every other weekend. Even if she was working on a case, she would almost always take the time to meet with her dad, although those meetings were necessarily a little shorter. And of course, on the weekends when they didn't meet, they always spoke on the phone.

"I wouldn't miss it."

"Okay. I'll see you next weekend, then, Dad."

"Have a good week and be careful."

Kate smiled at the familiar refrain. "Yes, Dad."

Jim Beckett smiled to himself as he went inside his apartment. Katie might not have said much about just how her relationship with Rick was going but he knew his daughter and the way she'd smiled and blushed told him a lot, almost as much as the general ease in her manner, the light in her eyes, when she'd looked at Rick.

He sighed a little even as he smiled. He was going to need to give his Katie away before too long, he fully expected. As much as he liked Rick and approved of him, a part of his heart ached a little at the thought.

And as usually happened, he could hear Johanna's well-remembered voice in his head. _Don't be silly, Jim Beckett. You won't lose Katie if she marries Rick and you know you like him._

Yes, he knew all that. Even now, after all these years, Johanna served as the voice of reason.

 _Think of it this way, Jim. You won't be losing a daughter so much as you'll be gaining a son. And you know Rick loves Katie and she loves him. So stop pouting._

He was not pouting.

Jim managed a soft chuckle at himself, his own maudlin thoughts, even if he supposed it was forgivable after the last day of desperate worry over Katie's safety.

And as usual, Johanna—the memory of her that lived on in his mind—was right. He was quite sure that Rick loved Katie and that she loved him, had been sure of that even before they'd told him so.

He smiled again and this time the smile was unforced, free of any lingering melancholy. His Katie was happy and what more could he possibly want for his daughter than that?

* * *

Castle made his way upstairs to Alexis's bedroom door, where she'd retreated soon after breakfast, citing the need to study for her physics exam.

He knocked and then peeked inside when he heard her say "come in."

"It's me, Alexis. I'm sorry to bother you when you're studying," he added perfunctorily.

"That's never stopped you before," Alexis shot back but her teasing smile was affectionate.

He smiled back and entered the room, closing the door behind him and then settling on the bed. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

Alexis abruptly looked serious. "Is everything okay? You weren't hurt yesterday after all?"

"No!" he answered with as much definiteness as he could, mentally kicking himself. He hadn't meant to scare her. He calmed his tone. "It's nothing bad, Alexis. I wanted to talk to you about Kate. You care about Kate and like having her around, right?"

Her face lit up with a smile. "You're going to propose to Kate, aren't you, Dad? I'm so gl—"

His eyes flared and he almost choked. "Propose?" That was what Alexis expected him to want to talk about?

Alexis's face abruptly fell. "You mean you're not going to propose to Kate?"

He opened his mouth, closed it, attempting to get his now-disordered thoughts into coherence. "I plan to, yes," he answered, keeping his tone measured to keep from either bouncing up and down like a loon or engaging in a spout of logorrhea, "but that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about today."

Alexis looked cheerful again. "So you do want to marry Kate. I knew it!"

He made a rather wry face. "What gave me away?"

She laughed. "Silly Dad. You know you're not subtle and I know you love Kate."

Love Kate. It seemed too weak a word. What he felt for Kate was more than he'd ever known he could feel for any woman. He remembered what he'd felt for the three women he'd believed he loved in his adult life—Kyra, Meredith, Gina. What he felt for Kate was so much more, so much deeper, by an order of magnitude. It was like trying to compare the flame of a match to the light and heat of the sun.

And Alexis thought he should propose.

He felt a surge of joy that was almost too deep for smiles, along with a rush of love, for his daughter this time. "So you won't mind if I marry Kate?"

Alexis gave him a look as if he'd just asked her what day it was, but answered with characteristic thoughtfulness. "Kate loves you and she makes you happy, Dad. Happier than you ever were with Gina." She paused and then her eyes cut away to focus on her lap before she added so quietly he almost needed to strain to hear the words. "Happier than you were with Mom."

Oh. Castle felt as if a hand had reached inside his chest and squeezed his heart in a fist. He'd tried so hard never to let Alexis know about the reasons why his relationship with Meredith had deteriorated aside from the simple fact of their divorce (although it had happened when Alexis had been too young to understand) but she was too perceptive to fool her easily and it wasn't as if Meredith's shortcomings as a wife or ex-wife were masked or mitigated by her virtues as a mother. He sighed and reached out to tug Alexis close to him so she settled beside him. "Sweetie, whatever else, I'll always be grateful to your Mom because she gave me you and you are the best thing that's ever happened to me. You know that, right?"

Alexis nodded and pitched forward to hug him. "I love you, Dad."

He wrapped his arms around his precious girl. "Love you too, pumpkin."

Alexis drew back and gave him a quick smile. "I love Kate too and she's already part of the family so I think you should make it official."

He smiled, warmth flooding his chest at Alexis's easy declaration that Kate was part of the family. "Are you giving me your permission then, Alexis?"

She laughed. "If you want to put it that way, sure." She sobered. "I'll be leaving for college next year and I know I can trust Kate to look after you when I'm gone."

"You do realize that I'm a grown-up and can take care of myself," he huffed in mock scolding in order to hide the way his heart pinched at the very thought of Alexis leaving for college so soon.

"I'll believe it when I see it," Alexis returned pertly.

He laughed. "Fair enough."

"So have you bought a ring yet?"

"Not yet," he answered honestly. Although it wasn't for lack of looking. He'd looked when he'd visited Tiffany's, Cartier, and Harry Winston while searching for Kate's Valentine's Day gift but nothing had immediately leaped out at him among the rings or any other section in all the expensive sparkliness and he'd ended up buying Kate's bracelet online as it was. Since then, he had slipped out a couple times to browse through other high-end jewelry stores but had not found the perfect ring.

Alexis gave him a bright-eyed look. "Will you show me when you do buy it?"

"Of course," he promised, even as he felt his heart begin to bounce around in his chest at the thought of finding a ring for Kate, of actually proposing. To calm himself, he changed the subject. "Anyway, that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about. Kate wanted to know if it would be okay with you if she moved in here, officially, so she'd be around all the time and not just some of the time."

"I think that'd be great. I love having Kate around." She gave him a look. "Dad, you weren't really worried I would say no, were you?"

"I wasn't," he assured her. He really hadn't been. Alexis had been initially nervous about Gina moving in, he knew, although Alexis had tried to hide it, but Gina and Alexis had never bonded the way Alexis and Kate already had. "But Kate wanted to make sure it was okay with you."

"That's sweet but Dad, this is your place so you didn't need to ask."

He suppressed a quick frown. "No, Alexis, that's not true. This is your home and you have just as much of a say as I do in who lives here."

She smiled at him. "Well, I like having Kate around." She shot him a smirk. "I'm sure she'll be a better roommate than you."

He huffed in exaggerated disgruntlement. "Roommate? I'm your father, ungrateful child, not a roommate."

She grinned at him. "I still think she'll be better to have around. She's not nearly as messy as you are and she cleans up after herself." She sobered. "It's a great idea, Dad. I don't know why Kate didn't move in months ago."

He felt a surge of tenderness for his generous daughter and lifted his hand to brush a strand of hair away from her face. "You know you're still the most important person in the world to me, right Alexis? Kate moving in or anything else won't change that."

She gave him one of her patented silly Dad looks. "Of course I know that, Dad."

"Just making sure." He dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Thank you, Alexis."

"For what?"

"For saying yes and just for being you."

Alexis smirked. "Tell Kate that as soon as she officially moves in, we're due for a game of laser tag so we can take you down."

He made a face at her. "You're making me rethink having Kate move in."

Alexis laughed. "Liar, Dad. Now go away. I need to study."

"Fine. Fine," he pretended to grouse as he left, closing Alexis's door behind him.

Castle felt a grin split his face as he made his way back downstairs.

Kate would be home soon, he expected, once she took care of dropping her dad off at his apartment and then ran some errands.

And she wanted to move in.

There would be some logistical issues to sort through. The lease on her apartment ran through May, for one thing, and they would need to make some decisions about either selling or putting her furniture in storage. But he didn't care. Those were minor details.

All that really mattered to him was that he and Kate would be together every night. Kate would be the last person he saw at night, the first person he saw every morning when he opened his eyes. It was all he had ever wanted.

Well, almost.

He paused and then abruptly turned and went back to Alexis's room. "Hey, Alexis?"

"Yeah, Dad?"

"I'm going to go out for a little while, run some errands, but you know Gram's home and you can call me if you need anything."

Alexis waved at him. "I'll be fine, Dad."

He smiled and blew her a quick kiss before he left, his steps now quick. With Kate gone, it occurred to him, he should take advantage of this time to go ring shopping. Because he really needed to find a ring.

Because Alexis approved of him marrying Kate and Kate had said someday and third time's the charm…

He thought again about what Esposito had said yesterday, about how lucky they were to have survived.

He knew exactly how lucky he was. Alexis was, as always, a miracle. And the most incredible women he'd ever met in his life loved him and wanted to have his children one day.

He really was the luckiest man in the world.

 _~To be continued…~_

A/N 2: I know this chapter was somewhat light on actual Caskett interaction but the other conversations just came into my head and demanded to be written. As always, all reviews are very much appreciated, especially to the guest reviewers whom I can't thank directly.


	24. Chapter 23: Law and Murder 1

Author's Note: The first of two chapters based on "Law and Murder," which is another of my favorite S3 episodes. Expect some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 23_

Kate was enjoying the luxury of a morning where she didn't need to go into the precinct, a morning to be lazy, with Castle.

She had spent the weekend helping the senior ADA who was going to be trying the Cano Vega case prepare for the trial since voir dire was scheduled to start from this morning and the actual trial of Bobby Fox would likely begin tomorrow. The case was, of course, attracting a lot of media attention and so the ADA had been adamant about making doubly, if not triply, sure that all the i's were dotted and the t's crossed, so to speak, in preparing for the trial. So Kate had needed to help him in walking him through the entire case and the evidence against Fox.

The Captain had told her she could take the morning off because of all the extra time she'd put in over the weekend and Kate had not even tried to protest. (A little strange, still, after years of working many more hours than necessary and generally arguing with the Captain when he even suggested she take a day off, to find herself so willing to actually take time off. It also still surprised her to realize to the full how much her own workaholic tendencies had been encouraged, if not caused by, the simple fact that she hadn't had much of a life outside of work anyway.)

Castle had spent the weekend writing. Kate (rather irrationally) felt as if she'd barely seen him all weekend long in spite of coming home to the loft every night so she was all the more glad to spend the morning with him outside of the precinct. She was simply… happy to be with him, even though they weren't even talking, were just sitting next to each other at the kitchen island. Castle was engrossed in the day's crossword puzzle while she was reading the newspaper as she sipped her second cup of coffee.

Castle muttered something under his breath as he erased the letters he had just written in and she glanced at him, a little amused at the frowning intensity of his expression. It was as if all of Castle's latent competitiveness mingled in with his pride as a writer came to the fore when he did the crossword so he tended to act as if not being able to finish it within what he deemed an acceptable amount of time was a personal affront.

She suppressed a smile and let her hand rest on his knee, making him look at her.

She leaned in to buss his lips. "Stop glaring at the paper, Castle. You look like you're trying to set it on fire with the power of your mind," she teased him lightly.

He huffed a laugh and she felt him relax, leaning into her as he dropped a kiss on her hair. "I always thought that would be a cool super-power to have," he commented half-absently.

"Of course you would," she agreed indulgently. Knowing Castle, she was sure he'd spent quite a bit of time considering the pros and cons of every different kind of super-power ever mentioned in a comic book.

He made a small face at her. "Don't distract me, Beckett," he pretended to scold. "I'm almost done and if you keep talking, I won't be able to finish."

"Now you know how I felt when you first started to follow me around at work, constantly distracting me," she teased.

"Hey, I was helpful!"

"Eh, maybe some of the time," she said in the tone of someone making a great concession.

He drew back, giving her a look of exaggerated dismay. "I was frequently helpful!" he yelped in mock indignation.

She opened her mouth to respond but before she could, she heard Martha's voice trilling, "Good morning, my loves," before Martha herself appeared on the staircase, making a trademark dramatic entrance.

Castle gave her a look that promised he wanted to return to the subject of his helpfulness on their early cases and Kate suppressed a smirk as she turned to greet Martha. "Good morning, Martha."

Martha patted her shoulder lightly as she passed. "Katherine darling, aren't you running late for work? Richard might be able to go in when he pleases but I know you can't."

"Oh, the Captain gave me the morning off because of having to work this weekend."

"Well, that was nice of Captain Montgomery." Martha turned to Kate with a bright smile. "And that means you can try one of my breakfast smoothies too."

Martha was rummaging through the fridge and so didn't see Castle grimace and shake his head frantically.

Kate smirked and ignored him. Castle always did like to give Martha a hard time. "That sounds nice, Martha."

Martha emerged with her hands full of a number of vegetables and some fruits that she placed on the counter next to the blender. She turned back to throw a smile at both Kate and Castle. "Oh good. I'll make enough for all of us then."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Kate asked.

Martha flapped a hand at her. "No need, Katherine. There's not much to do except toss things into the blender. You sit there and relax."

Thus adjured, Kate returned to skimming through the paper, pausing on an ad and made a mental note to mention it to Castle. He had returned to his crossword and although Kate knew him too well to think he was really serious about not distracting him, she knew how irritating an interruption could be and refrained. Her forbearance was aided by Martha turning on the blender and the noise was enough that Kate felt as if she'd need to shout to be heard anyway.

After a couple minutes, the blender ceased and at almost the same time, Castle tossed down his pencil with a sound of triumph. "Ha! Victory is mine!"

Kate suppressed a smile. Silly man.

"Say, Castle, _Forbidden Planet_ is playing again at the Angelika. Do you want to go?"

Castle grinned at her and placed a deliberately smacking kiss on her cheek. "Of course, Beckett. It'll be like reliving our first date."

She laughed in spite of herself. "That time we went to the Angelika was not our first date."

"It was too."

Kate narrowed her eyes at him. "If you expect me to say 'was not,' and start sounding like a five-year-old, you can think again."

He laughed. "I'd never expect you, my badass Beckett, to sound like a five-year-old."

His badass Beckett. She suppressed a smile. She rather liked the sound of that, liked more that it was how he thought of her.

"Here we are, one breakfast smoothie for each of you," Martha interjected, bringing over two glasses filled with a thick liquid in a decidedly unappetizing shade of green.

Castle eyed it with approximately as much enthusiasm as if Martha had just set a cupful of cyanide in front of him.

Kate suppressed a smile as she lifted her glass and tried some. It was… interesting. It tasted rather like a spinach salad or something similar, only in liquid form, which was a little disconcerting but otherwise not bad. She smiled at Martha. "This is pretty good."

Castle glanced between her and his own cup and then took a cautious drink, only to immediately grimace and then pretend to gag. "Ugh. Are you trying to kill me? What's in this?"

"Everything you need for a healthier and longer life," Martha answered.

"What's the sense of living longer if you have to drink that?" Castle protested.

Martha ignored him and took a large drink from her own glass. "Ah, that's the stuff."

Alexis came running lightly down the stairs while Castle was still making faces at his glass of smoothie.

"Good morning."

Alexis's arrival (as usual) neatly distracted Castle and he turned to her. "Morning, pumpkin. Hey, why aren't you in school?"

"It's faculty development day," Alexis answered in her 'I already told you this, Dad' tone.

Castle's expression lit up with excitement and he met Kate's eyes for a fleeting moment, which was, somehow, all Kate needed to know what he was going to say next. "Perfect! You can come with us to watch _Forbidden Planet_ at the Angelika. Remember you used to love that movie."

Alexis's answer was hurried. "I can't. I made plans to spend the day in the Village."

Castle's expression immediately collapsed into a frown of disappointment.

Alexis took a quick gulp of Castle's smoothie before dropping a fleeting kiss on Castle's cheek, as she almost always did before leaving. "Delicious. Bye, Grams. Bye, Kate, Dad."

With that, Alexis flitted out the door of the loft almost as quickly as she'd come downstairs a minute ago, leaving Castle frowning after her.

Kate knew how much Castle loved spending time with Alexis but his disappointment seemed overblown and she was just about to comment on it when Castle turned back to them. "Did you see that? Alexis lied."

Lied? Kate blinked.

"She did not," Martha protested. "She loves my breakfast smoothies."

Castle made a rather impatient gesture. "No, no, not about that. About where she's going today. Her nose crinkled. That's her tell."

Really, Castle? She knew how much Castle loved mysteries but now he was analyzing Alexis's every minute expression or gesture as if she were a suspect in the box? Alexis, of all people?

Martha rolled her eyes. "Honey, come on. This is not the World Series of Poker."

"I'm telling you, she's up to something," Castle insisted.

"Castle, really," Kate began only to be interrupted by the sound of her phone going off. "Beckett."

"Beckett, I know I gave you the morning off but a case has come up that I want you to work on," she heard Captain Montgomery's voice over the line.

"Of course, sir," she agreed automatically, straightening up.

"It's not your team's turn to catch the next case but this one's got the press all over it so I want this one put to bed fast and that means putting my best people on it. The victim's Joe McUsic."

Who? Kate frowned a little. The Captain said the name as if she should have heard of him and he'd already said the press was interested but why? She opened her mouth to ask but before she could, Montgomery was continuing on. "He's Juror #7 in the Lyla Addison case and he just dropped dead in the courthouse during closing argument."

The Lyla Addison case! Kate mentally reviewed the bare facts of the case from what she remembered reading at the time it had happened. Lyla Addison, only daughter in the rich Addison family, found shot dead and—final brutality—her body stuffed into the trunk of her car. It had been just over a year ago, had happened about a week before she had gone on that disastrous date with Brad-the-firefighter at Drago. She remembered, now, that Castle had mentioned the Addison case in passing when they'd been at Remy's later that evening, saying that he'd been introduced to Lyla's parents, the Addisons, once or twice at fundraisers and such and couldn't imagine how they felt.

"I'll be right there, sir."

"The body's already at the morgue. Esposito and Ryan are en route to the courthouse and will meet you there later. Keep me posted, Detective," was Montgomery's parting injunction before he hung up.

Kate turned back to Castle. "Sorry, Castle, but we're going to have to take a rain check on that movie. We've got a new case."

"Even better," he said with unseemly cheer. "I love starting a new week with a fresh body."

She gave him a look and he promptly schooled his expression into sobriety.

"Not that I'm happy that there's been a murder. I just think that any time spent with you is a good thing," he backtracked hastily.

She gave in to her faint, indulgent smile. She knew he didn't mean to sound callous; Castle, of all people, understood that every victim was important and deserved to be treated as such. It was just his way to sound as if he took everything lightly, his frivolous façade well-honed and, in fairness, it was also his way to focus on the positive.

"Nice save," she teased and leaned in to give him a quick kiss on the lips—except for the first time, he turned his head so her lips touched his cheek instead.

He twisted his face into a comical grimace. "You just drank Mother's breakfast concoction. I'm not letting you kiss me until you rinse your mouth out or at the very least, have some gum or something else to get rid of that taste," he declared with childish pettishness.

She rolled her eyes. "I don't know how I put up with you," she told him as she slid off the stool.

"Too late now, Beckett. You're stuck with me."

She pretended to groan at that. "I must have done something terrible in a past life," she retorted with mock despair as she hurried into his office to retrieve her gun from the safe. Back in the front room of the loft, she slipped into her jacket that Castle was already holding up for her and then made a show of returning to the kitchen to hunt up a breath mint and toss it into her mouth, making him laugh.

Kate gave Martha a quick smile and touched her arm fleetingly before leaving the kitchen. "Bye, Martha. We'll see you tonight."

"Good luck on the case and be careful."

Castle waved at Martha in response and then they were on their way.

Predictably, Castle returned almost immediately to his new preoccupation with Alexis's alleged lie. "I'm telling you, Alexis lied. I know her tells and the way her nose crinkled a little is one of them. Something's going on with her."

"Alexis is a good kid and a smart one," Kate responded mildly. She bit back the comment that Castle was overreacting, even if she rather thought he was. He was Alexis's parent after all. "And you trust her."

"Yes, I trust her but what if I'm wrong? What if she's hiding something big from me that I should know about? Teenagers these days are always said to be like icebergs, that their parents only see a small fraction of their lives."

"Alexis is hardly a normal teen, Castle. Remember this is the same girl who confessed to you in near tears almost two years ago about the time she'd jumped the turnstile to catch the subway. Does that sound like a girl who'd get into serious trouble?"

"No, but she's grown up a lot in those two years. She has a serious boyfriend now," he said, as gloomily as if Alexis having a boyfriend at her age was an inevitable precursor to being a high school dropout, which was, admittedly, the way Castle usually tended to sound when he mentioned Ashley when Alexis wasn't around. He had gotten much better at appearing fully accepting of Ashley, as much as any father of a teenage daughter would, when Alexis was around, and Kate was reasonably sure that Castle rather liked Ashley personally, only objecting on principle to the very idea that his little girl had a boyfriend at all. "She doesn't talk to me about everything anymore and I just… worry. What if the lie this morningis just the first step?"

"You're still Alexis's go-to guy," Kate consoled, attempting to nip Castle's spiraling worry in the bud. She knew his fertile imagination was probably already concocting increasingly outlandish, worrisome scenarios of what Alexis might be involved in, of which smoking cigarettes and ditching class were probably the best options. "I'm sure if something was really wrong or Alexis got in any kind of trouble, she'll come to you as soon as she can. She knows you're always there for her."

Castle sighed. "I liked it so much better when she was a little kid having tea parties with her dolls and me."

"Sadly, it's not possible for any of us to freeze time or go back in time like that," Kate commented and then changed the subject to the case as they were almost at the morgue. She wanted to distract Castle from his fretting over Alexis, especially as she honestly believed that Castle's fretting was unnecessary. She couldn't imagine sensible, responsible Alexis getting into trouble and Castle was not a strict parent as it was.

"Say, Castle, fair warning that Captain Montgomery specifically assigned our team to the case in the hopes that we'll be able to crack it quickly so we might need all your ingenuity put to work. The press is going to be all over this."

As she'd hoped, that got his attention and he straightened up to look at her. "Why, who's the victim?"

"Joe McUsic, also known as Juror Number 7 in the Lyla Addison case."

Castle let out a low whistle. "The heir to the Addison fortune is murdered and then a juror is killed? You don't even need to be a crime novelist to see the potential for a thriller in that. What's the cause of death?"

"That's what we're on our way to the morgue to find out. The boys will meet us at the courthouse."

She hoped that Lanie would have the official cause of death by now as it would allow them to narrow down the kill-zone and figure out to what extent the Lyla Addison case and the courthouse was involved. The ME's Office must have ruled out that the death might be accidental or of natural causes before getting Homicide involved, even if all suspicious deaths were reported to the NYPD. But whether the specific cause of unnatural death was known for certain was less sure.

"You know, Beckett, correct me if I'm wrong but don't we usually have to catch the killer before he or she goes to trial?" Castle quipped, only half-jokingly.

"The courthouse is the crime scene," she answered just as they arrived at the morgue. "Apparently, Joe McUsic just dropped dead in the middle of the closing argument."

"This just keeps getting better," Castle enthused.

Castle's luck, so to speak, held (although Kate didn't like to think of it in such terms) as Lanie's news was that McUsic had been killed by cyanide, which had been administered at the courthouse. Castle was quite predictably (and creepily) excited over the bare facts of the case, making a point of texting his mystery writer buddies to claim dibs on writing about the case.

It looked, at least after a while, that there wasn't going to be much mystery or trouble involved in finding out the killer as the defendant's belligerent cousin had been caught on a courthouse camera handing a coffee cup to the victim right within the estimated kill-zone. He insisted he and his cousin were innocent but of course, had no proof for it so he was sent to the holding cells.

"Too bad," Castle commented. "I was hoping there'd be a little more to the story than that."

She suppressed a small smile. "Sorry this case doesn't meet your standards for thrills and chills, Castle."

"Nice rhyming," he commented half-absently. "Hmm."

"Hmm, what?"

Castle frowned at his phone. "Alexis said she'll be in the Village today but she's over in Williamsburg."

"How do you know she's in Williamsburg?" She knew Castle liked to pretend omniscience but knowing Alexis's location at any given moment seemed a bit much.

"GPS tracked her phone," he answered rather smugly.

"You tracked her phone?" she repeated incredulously.

"Yeah. Super cool app I just downloaded," he answered, holding up his phone with self-satisfaction. "I can see where she is at any time."

Was he kidding about this? He was tracking Alexis's phone? She knew Castle was a concerned and devoted father but he was taking it too far now. "Does she know that you're doing this?"

He scoffed. "What, are you kidding? No, she'd kill me."

Well, at least he knew that much. "And be justified!" Kate agreed with some force.

Castle looked startled at her vehemence. "I'm her father. If something's going on, I need to know. A lot of parents will go through their kids' drawers or computers. Far less intrusive."

Was he joking? No, of course he wasn't, she answered her own rhetorical question. She knew when Castle was joking and he was quite sincere now. "Castle, tell me you're not being serious," she said, giving him a last out.

"Of course I'm serious. This is Alexis we're talking about. I told you I thought something was going on with her and now I know I was right. She did lie to me."

Maybe so but that was hardly the point. "Castle, even if Alexis lied to you, she hardly deserves to have you tracking her every move like this. Whatever happened to trusting her more than anyone?"

Castle opened his mouth to respond but before he could get out more than one syllable, her phone rang and their discussion was interrupted.

It was Lanie saying she had lab results for them and to get down to the morgue.

They duly headed to the lab and Kate had never been as thankful for the drive over as she was now when it allowed them to continue this discussion. She didn't want to take sides between Castle and Alexis and she never wanted to come between them in any way but at the same time, she could hardly stand aside and let Castle intrude on Alexis's privacy in such a way and so undeservedly.

"Alexis lied to me," Castle repeated again, rather defensively. "If she's involved with something she feels she needs to lie about, then I need to know."

"Alexis is 16, Castle. I hate to break it to you but the simple fact that she might not tell you everything doesn't make her a criminal."

"I never said she was a criminal."

Kate switched to a different tack. "You say you trust Alexis more than anyone else in the world. Would you track my phone?"

He snorted. "I'm not _suicidal_ , Beckett, don't be ridiculous. And anyway, it's not the same thing. You're a grown-up and I know you can take care of yourself. Alexis is my daughter and she's a minor."

"Still. If you trust her, you should act like it, Castle. Alexis is a good kid. It would be one thing if she was a perennial trouble-maker or something but she's the furthest thing from a trouble-maker. She doesn't deserve to be spied on."

"I'm not spying on her. I'm keeping tabs on her whereabouts but it doesn't tell me what she's doing there."

"I'm sure Alexis will find that distinction very edifying," she said dryly as they arrived at the morgue.

Fortunately (or not), Lanie's news was startling enough that Castle's little venture into helicopter parenting ended up being pushed aside as it turned out that McUsic hadn't been poisoned at the courthouse at all and their kill-zone was off by a matter of hours, sending them essentially back to the beginning with the case.

And as it happened, the case kept getting more intriguing when the evidence came out that evening that McUsic had bribed his way onto the jury pool.

"Bribing a court clerk to get out of jury duty is easy to imagine but using bribes to get on jury duty seems a new twist," Castle commented.

That was for sure.

Captain Montgomery instructed them to look into if McUsic had any connections to the Addison case or to the defendant, Otis Williams, to explain why he had wanted on that jury so badly.

"I'll get on it in the morning, sir," Kate answered. She turned back to Castle as Montgomery left. "You remember I'm meeting up with Lanie tonight, right?" She and Lanie had planned to meet up for one of their usual girls-night-out dinners this weekend but since she'd gotten pulled into trial prep, they'd postponed it until tonight, not knowing that a case would come up. But she and Lanie were both well used to the way each of their jobs had unpredictable hours and so were going ahead with their plans to meet up for a drink after work anyway.

"I remember. Have fun with Lanie and I'll see you later."

"If Alexis kills you for tracking her phone, tell her I'll help her hide the body once I get home tonight," she quipped.

He made a wry face at her. "Why, thank you, Beckett. Your support is heartwarming."

She patted his chest consolingly. "I hardly think Alexis will actually kill you so you should be safe, Castle."

"Great, I feel much better," he said with uncharacteristically pessimistic sarcasm as they parted, she to head to the bar where she and Lanie were meeting and Castle to hail a cab to return to the loft.

Lanie was already waiting when Kate walked into the bar and lifted a hand in a wave of greeting. "Hey, Beckett."

"Hey, Lanie. Sorry about being late. We had to give the Captain an update on the case."

"I figured."

Kate ordered a glass of wine since it was a weeknight and they were in the middle of a case.

Lanie fixed Kate with a look. "So what's up with you and Castle? Javi says you two are both so love-sick lately that you make Ryan and Jenny look like rival gang members in comparison."

"Esposito should mind his own business and stop gossiping so much," Kate responded as tartly as she could manage.

"Oh, don't get all Detective-Beckett on me, Kate. We're your friends and Javi's not gossiping." Lanie's expression and her tone softened. "You two nearly died, more than once. You can't tell me that didn't change things even a little."

Kate sobered at the reference to the freezer and the dirty bomb, both of which had reappeared in her and Castle's nightmares in the couple weeks since then. Lanie might be her closest female friend but even so, Kate wasn't comfortable with talking about her relationship with Castle, not really, not about the serious stuff. She could—and did—tell Lanie funny stories involving Castle, occasionally griped about his more annoying moments, but the real serious stuff—that was… personal, private. She thought about Castle telling her he wanted everything with her. Everything—love, marriage, a family, a happily ever after. No, she wasn't telling anyone about that.

But Lanie was her best friend and, perhaps more importantly, she was persistent so Kate couldn't exactly not answer. "It didn't change things, not really," she finally temporized, truthfully enough. "It's not like we didn't already know… that this, our relationship, is serious. But I did tell him that I want to move in to the loft."

Lanie quirked a rather wry smile. "Haven't you practically been living at the loft for months now, to say nothing of the months you did live at the loft last year?"

"It wasn't the same, Lanie, you know that." Kate had rarely spent more than one night a week at her apartment since early January but the one night had still meant that she hadn't kept many clothes at the loft, had simply taken to packing a small bag with enough clothing for the week when she went to the loft. But that really wasn't the same as living at the loft. She had since packed an actual suitcase with enough clothing to last a couple weeks and unpacked it once she'd returned to the loft on that day after the dirty bomb case ended. More importantly, she had also brought over the keepsake box with her parents' picture on it, which Castle had given to her last year and placed it on the dresser in his room. Kate smiled inwardly at the memory of Castle's expression when he'd seen it.

"Yeah, I know," Lanie agreed. "But your relationship with Castle has always been different from any other relationship you've had."

Which was true, too, although Lanie could only speak from her having known Kate while she'd been with Will.

"Yeah, Castle's different," Kate said softly. "He's… the real thing." He was her one.

"Just promise me one thing."

"What?"

"Promise that you'll take me with you when you go shopping for wedding dresses."

Kate's heart stuttered a little in her chest at the thought—not of getting engaged but the stark realization that she would be shopping for wedding dresses without her mother. But she pushed the emotion aside and answered with studied composure, "Castle and I aren't engaged." _Yet_ , but Kate left the word unsaid, only hugged the thought privately to herself.

Lanie snorted. "Oh please, girl, don't try and play dumb with me. If Castle doesn't pop the question in the next couple months, I'll eat my lab-coat. And then I'll go after Castle with a scalpel demanding to know why he isn't making an honest woman of you."

"You'll need to wait in line after my dad if you do," Kate joked but couldn't quite help her blush at Lanie's blithe assumption of her and Castle's future. In retaliation, she quickly changed the subject to ask, "What about you and _Javi_? You guys seem to be getting serious, going out on a real date on Valentine's Day and all."

Lanie didn't really blush but the way she took a quick drink and fiddled with the corner of her cocktail napkin spoke volumes. "We're good," she finally answered succinctly and uninformatively.

It was Kate's turn to snort. "Oh come on, Lanie, fair is fair. We've talked about me and Castle. Now it's your turn to talk. You and Espo have been together for, what, six months now?"

Lanie made a small moue. "It's hard to say," she finally admitted after a while. "It started as a casual friends-with-bennies thing and then we just… kept on spending time together and somehow it started to look like a real relationship."

"Annoying how feelings just creep up on you like that, isn't it," Kate quipped. She could laugh about it now, the time she'd spent fighting her own attraction to Castle, her feelings for him, even if, in hindsight, it had clearly been a doomed attempt from the beginning.

Lanie laughed a little. "Yeah. I don't know, Kate. We really like each other and we're just taking it one step at a time for now." She met Kate's eyes. "You and Castle are so lucky, you know that, right?"

Kate felt herself flush a little and ducked her head, her small smile directed at her lap. "I know."

There was a brief pause and then Lanie changed the subject to a story about another detective in another precinct that was making the rounds and the conversation devolved into a casual chat between two friends.

It was a weeknight and they were in the middle of a case, no less, so they didn't linger for too long and Kate was slipping her key into the door of the loft within the hour.

The front room was deserted and Kate headed directly into Castle's office both to find him and to deposit her gun in the safe.

He looked up as she walked in and gave her a quick smile. "Hey, Beckett. So did you get the scoop on Lanie and Esposito?"

He was making a valiant attempt at sounding like his usual curious self but his tone rang somewhat hollow and his smile didn't reach his eyes.

"They're just seeing where it goes," she answered over her shoulder as she put her gun away. "It's not like either of them is in a rush to commit." She paused and then asked quietly, "Where's Alexis?"

As she'd expected, the question made him drop the pretense, his shoulders slumping, as he sighed. "She found out and blew up at me. She stormed upstairs and now she's not speaking to me."

As much as she had entirely expected Alexis to be angry and agreed with Alexis that Castle had been wrong, she still hated to see him looking so despondent. But she had to point out, although she kept her voice mild, "You had it coming, Castle. You have the best kid in the world and you treated her like a common criminal."

He grimaced as if he'd just tasted something bitter. "Maybe she is, though. I still don't know why she lied about going to Williamsburg. I just… I want to help her and I can't do that if I don't know what's going on in her life."

She hesitated, not quite sure of her place here, but the worry clouding his eyes and expression tore at her (along with, she had to admit, her own concern for Alexis.) "Maybe… I can try to talk to her," she offered tentatively. "If it's okay." She left unsaid that it might be easier for Alexis to confide in someone who wasn't her parent.

"Would you, Kate?"

"Castle, you know that even if Alexis talks to me, I won't betray her confidences to you," she cautioned.

"I know. I wouldn't ask you to—well, no, I might ask," he admitted, twisting his lips wryly, "but I wouldn't expect you to tell me anything Alexis told you in confidence and I'm glad you won't. But I'd feel better if she talked to you. I trust you."

She felt a flutter of something like nervousness, a surge of self-doubt, as she realized, again, the depth of Castle's trust in her—the magnitude of her responsibility to Alexis—what did she know about being a parent after all. "I'll go up now and try to talk to her," was all she said.

Kate knocked gently on Alexis's closed door. "Alexis, it's Kate."

"What is it?" Alexis's tone was hard even through the closed door and could not be described as welcoming but Kate opened the door anyway although she only ventured a step or two inside the girl's room.

"Hi, Alexis, I'm back now," she began lamely and then could have kicked herself for sounding so inane.

A flicker of something that might have been a shadow of amusement crossed Alexis's face but the girl only regarded Kate for a moment with uncharacteristically cool eyes. "If you're here to argue Dad's case to me, don't bother."

Kate inwardly winced. Alexis really was angry, angrier than Kate had ever seen her. Her tone, if not her words, were bordering on rude in a way that was unlike the usually polite teen Kate knew. "I'm not here to argue your dad's case." She bit back the assurance that she was on Alexis's side in the matter. It was true but taking sides between Castle and Alexis wasn't going to help. "I just wanted to see if you wanted to talk about it. I thought it might be easier to talk to someone who's not your parent and I promise you anything you tell me will stay between us unless you tell me otherwise."

Alexis's expression softened so she no longer appeared hostile but then again, her anger hadn't been directed at Kate herself to begin with, so much as it was directed at Castle. "I appreciate that," Alexis began, sounding more like herself, "and that you're asking me about it rather than spying on me," she inserted, rather more sharply, "but I can't tell you."

That set off alarm bells ringing in Kate's mind. She could, she was aware, try to interrogate Alexis into admitting what she'd lied about and why. She spent her entire life cajoling unwilling confessions out of people but even as she thought it, she recoiled at the thought of interrogating Alexis. And looking at Alexis now, thinking about the girl she'd come to know, Kate still, for the life of her, couldn't believe that Alexis had done something seriously wrong. No, she trusted Alexis more than that.

"All right," Kate agreed. "But remember I'm here if you want to talk about anything."

Alexis managed a twitch of her lips that might have been the precursor to a smile. "Okay."

"Have a good night, Alexis."

Castle looked up with an expression of bald hope that promptly faded the moment he saw Kate's expression when she returned to his office.

"She didn't talk to you either," he guessed gloomily.

"No, she didn't." She would normally sit down in the other chair but it was across the room from Castle and for this talk and also because of Castle's troubled look, she wanted to be close to him. So she moved to perch on the edge of Castle's desk where she was close enough to reach out and touch him.

He sighed. "I can't help her or advise her or anything unless I know what she's involved in. Was what I did so very wrong?"

"I don't think it matters to Alexis why you did it," she said gently. "You violated her trust."

He flinched almost imperceptibly. "Yeah, I know. So what do I do now?"

"Win it back." Such a simple and yet such a hard thing to do, as Kate well knew, but this was a relatively small incident in the larger scheme of things. She couldn't believe that it would really go to the roots of Alexis's abiding trust in Castle. She of all people knew how persistent a child's trust in a parent built up over the years could be, the repeated and visceral blows that were necessary to really rip apart the fabric of that trust.

She softened her tone. "You can't force confidences. Alexis might be angry now but give her some more time to calm down and I think she'll remember that you would never willingly hurt her and you'll always be there for her, no matter what she might be involved in."

He reached over and grasped her hand to tug her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her hair. "Thank you, Kate," he said, his voice somewhat muffled.

"For what? Alexis didn't even talk to me so I haven't done anything."

He drew back just enough to meet her eyes. "Thank you for listening, for caring about Alexis so much. I haven't really had anyone to talk to about things like this. Meredith is usel—" he broke off abruptly, quickly correcting himself to say, "isn't interested, although she does love Alexis in her own way, and Gina never managed to get close enough to Alexis."

He had cut himself off before he could say outright that Meredith was useless but it was what he'd meant. And as harsh as it sounded, Kate knew it was true. Meredith may not be useless as a person but as a parent, the most that could really be said about her was that she was better than nothing. Kate might not know much about parenting but what she did know was that it was _hard_ to be a real parent and Castle had done it alone.

She knew Castle well enough to know that he would never talk about his daughter with anyone he didn't really trust, knew too just how few people Castle trusted that deeply. But he trusted her with Alexis.

"It means a lot to me," he said again, simply, and she could hear the truth of just how much it meant to him in his voice.

"Always, Rick," was all she said, softly, and hoped her use of their word and his first name would tell him all she felt, all she was promising, because it _was_ a promise. A promise to be there for him and for Alexis, a promise to be Castle's partner in this most important aspect of his life, being Alexis's father. Castle really never would have had anyone else to talk to or share any of his worries over Alexis but that was what she could do—what she _would_ do. Kate wasn't—could not be—Alexis's mother but she was Alexis's friend (and hopefully, someday, her stepmother, her family in truth) and she was Castle's partner, at work and in life.

He did understand. She saw it in the way his eyes softened, as he gave her one of his faint, tender smiles that always made her feel as if the sun had turned the full force of its warmth directly on her.

She leaned in and kissed him. He wasn't alone anymore and neither was she.

 _~To be continued…~_

* * *

 _A/N 2: I have decided that as far as I'm concerned, "Castle" ended in Season 7 so that will continue to be my playground for these characters that have gotten into my head too much for me to stop writing about them._

 _On a happier note, for anyone who missed it and is interested (and old enough), I posted the M-rated telling of Castle and Beckett's visit to the Varick Club, as they talked about in Chapter 18, as a separate fic called "Just One Night."_


	25. Chapter 24: Law and Murder 2

Author's Note: I hope the fluffiness in this fic is helping people get over the wreck of canon. (I know I'm still upset about it.) This is the second of the two chapters based on "Law and Murder." More familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 24_

Breakfast the next morning was quiet.

Castle was subdued in a way that betrayed just how much it weighed on him to be at odds with Alexis and kept glancing towards the stairs to watch for her to come downstairs.

Kate lingered but eventually, she had to get ready to leave for work since they were in the middle of a case, after all. She hesitated, glanced at the stairs that still showed no sign of Alexis, and then back at Castle. "I need to go to work but you can stay and talk to Alexis."

"Assuming she'll talk to me at all," he said gloomily. He looked at the clock and frowned a little. "She needs to leave for school soon anyway."

She patted his arm as she went into his office to retrieve her gun and then returned to the living room to see Alexis coming down the stairs.

"Good morning, Alexis," Castle said, somewhat tentatively.

And then Kate winced as Alexis, for the first time in her life, Kate was pretty sure, ignored Castle's greeting.

"Do you want any breakfast?" Kate spoke up, hoping that sitting down for the meal would break through Alexis's lingering sullen anger. She couldn't imagine that it wouldn't, as close as Castle and Alexis were. It wasn't natural for either Castle or Alexis not to be speaking to each other.

"No, thanks, Kate. I'll grab something on the way," Alexis answered and then she was out the door in the next minute, having steadfastly not looked at Castle.

Ouch.

For the first time, Kate felt a quick flicker of anger at Alexis. She might have understood Alexis's anger but ignoring Castle so entirely was, she felt, going a little too far, especially as Alexis would know how much it would hurt Castle. But then again, Kate reminded herself, Alexis was only sixteen, a teenager still, as much as it was easy to forget that with how mature Alexis usually seemed, and Kate remembered all too well the times she had been angry at her own parents and had ignored them too. She felt the usual pinch of her heart at the memories, every harsh word or harsher silence she had ever had for her mom weighing on her now that Kate would give everything she owned and then some just to be able to talk to her mom again.

She looked at Castle and hurriedly crossed the room to him, slipping her arm around him since he was still staring at the door of the loft looking as desolate as if a beloved pet had just died. "Give her time, Castle," she said softly. "She's angry and she's hurt but she will get over it."

"I suppose."

She kissed his cheek. "I'm sure of it, Castle. You and Alexis have been too close for her entire life for this to affect your relationship for too long."

He sighed. "Yeah, I guess. I just hate fighting with her."

"I don't think she likes fighting with you either," she observed and then added, quietly, "You okay to head to the precinct?" Working on a case might make him feel better too.

He blinked. "Yeah, sure."

They went to the precinct and dove straight into the case, trying to figure out why Joe McUsic had bribed his way onto the jury. They couldn't find any connection between Joe and Otis Williams or Joe and Lyla Addison until Castle's sharp eye noticed Joe in the crime scene photo from Lyla Addison's case file. And for once, Kate was thankful for Castle's love of convoluted theories as she saw, as he expounded on his "killer with a conscience" theory, that he was entirely distracted, caught up in the story he was telling. She gave him some push-back because she had to (and anyway, he would notice and get suspicious if she didn't) but then the plot took another twist as Ryan returned from Joe's apartment, where he'd gone to see if Joe's belongings provided any clues to a connection to either Otis Williams or Lyla. Instead, Ryan had found the burner phone Joe had bought, leading straight to the series of phone calls to the DA's office.

If ever a case had been made to ensure that Castle would be enthralled and not have any inclination to get bored, it was this one as the evidence started to look a lot like a conspiracy involving the DA. It was a plot straight out of a mystery novel, complete with a corrupt public official involved in the cover-up.

Castle was, she knew, enjoying every minute of it. She could see it in the brightness of his eyes, although by now he had learned to train his expression into seriousness. He did love conspiracy theories, especially real-life ones. And it was thanks to Castle and his outside-the-box thinking that they thought to interview Otis Williams himself, see what his information might lead them to with how Joe's murder was looking so directly tied to Lyla's.

"The seat-back button," Castle enthused as they returned to her desk. "What a great detail for a murder mystery."

She hid a smile. She already knew Castle was probably going to regale his mystery writer poker group with this one when they met up next month. "Only if we get a print," she cautioned as she picked up the phone to call the impound lot.

He made his 'don't ruin my story with your logic' face but had to concede, "Yes. Otherwise we'll just be looking for tall people."

She smirked and then felt her expression freeze as she heard Alexis's voice. "Dad?"

Castle spun around and Kate finally glimpsed Alexis standing just beyond the bullpen, looking hesitant.

"Alexis. H-hey," Castle greeted, not quite fluently. "Is everything okay?" he asked in swift concern.

"Can we talk?"

"Of course."

Castle glanced back at her and Kate promptly put on her best encouraging expression before he walked around to join Alexis. Her eyes met Alexis's and the girl gave her a faint ghost of a smile.

Kate watched as Castle and Alexis walked away to try to find some privacy in the bustling bullpen, her heart suddenly turning into a soft, melting thing in her chest at the sight of Castle's head bent down towards Alexis, the attentiveness and love in every line of his figure. Oh, damn. Really, falling in love had turned her into such a sap, she thought. But she couldn't seem to help it. She just… _cared_ so much about everything to do with both Castle and Alexis and knowing they had each in their own way been hurting over their brief estrangement had pained her so how could she not be happy to watch them and know they were mending?

She was distracted enough that she started when she heard a voice answer on the other end and had to mentally shake herself before she could explain what they needed. But she composed herself, asking CSU to expedite the results of the print since it was needed for two cases and Otis Williams's second trial was scheduled to start first thing next week. The wheels of justice could move awfully slowly but not for this case, not when the victim's parents were such important people who were subtly and not-so-subtly pressuring the system to get justice for their daughter. Fortunately, because the car was already in the impound lot, they didn't need to worry about getting a warrant so the CSU tech promised the results from the fingerprinting would be faxed over the moment they were finished, predicting it would only be a matter of minutes.

Kate tried—and rather failed—to keep herself busy by studying the murder board again, mulling over the evidence they had and how it all fit together. She found that she couldn't help but be distracted, wondering how Castle and Alexis were doing, what Alexis was telling Castle. She was positively itching to go over and try to find them but she heroically refrained from intruding on them. It was important for just the two of them to talk and iron out their differences. This was between them. She hoped—expected—that Castle would tell her about it later but, just as she herself had told Castle yesterday, she couldn't force the confidence by barging in on them. And even if Castle didn't tell her about it, that was fine. Her own curiosity didn't matter. As long as Castle and Alexis made up, that was really the most important thing, she told herself. And meant it. Really, she did!

As the CSU tech had predicted, it really was a matter of minutes before she heard the fax machine go off. Kate almost leaped out of her seat and rushed over to the machine to grab the results the moment it was done printing. And then stared at the sheet.

Well, that was a twist she hadn't seen coming. But it made sense in a messed-up way—one brother whose life had taken a different, honorable path after earlier missteps and then the ultimate betrayal. (God, she'd been spending too much time with Castle when her thoughts were starting to sound so dramatic.) But it did make sense, drama aside. Who better than Joe's own brother to have not only known about Joe's medication but also had easy access to them to tamper with the pills? Means and opportunity were obvious, motive somewhat less so but still easily filled in.

They needed to bring in Eddie McUsic.

She looked around for Espo or Ryan but couldn't see them and went to look for them, only to be brought up short as she rounded the corner to the hallway and stopped abruptly at the sight of a familiar red head. "Oh. I'm sorry," she blurted out, preparing to backtrack the way she'd come. She could kick herself for her bad luck and timing. And after she'd tried so hard not to disturb them.

"No," Alexis immediately spoke up. "You can stay, Kate. I was just leaving."

"You sure, Alexis? I can wait."

"It's fine. We're almost done," Alexis assured her. She turned back to Castle, meeting his eyes. "It won't happen again, Dad," she told him quietly. "Promise."

That said, the girl stood up and patted Castle's shoulder lightly, the familiarity of the gesture reassuring Kate more than almost anything else that Castle and Alexis's relationship was back to normal. "I'll see you guys later," she said.

"Bye, Alexis."

Kate and Castle both watched her go until she stepped into the elevator before Castle turned back to face Kate.

"You okay?" she asked. She had more questions but the middle of the precinct wasn't the place to ask them so she settled for the most basic inquiry.

"Yeah," he answered with a little sigh before he blinked and managed a faint smile. "But sometimes ignorance is bliss."

"Tell me about it." Kate held out the folder with the fingerprint results in it.

"Are those the results?" he asked, immediately distracted. "Whose prints were on the button?"

"See for yourself."

He did and she saw his jaw drop a little. "You've got to be kidding me," he blurted out.

"Nope. Come on, I was just about to tell the boys to bring in Eddie McUsic."

Castle snorted a little as he stood up. "Yeah, that's for sure. To quote Ricky Ricardo, he's 'got some 'splaining to do.'"

Castle's mimicry of the Cuban's signature line was fairly decent and Kate couldn't help her smile. Yes, Castle was definitely himself again.

It didn't take long to break Eddie McUsic, who was not a criminal mastermind by any means, and it turned out there was still another final surprise in the case as Eddie's story pointed to another culprit: Stephen Addison.

Money—or the lack of it—really had been the underlying thread that connected all the disparate pieces of evidence, the money Joe had used to bribe his way onto the jury, the money the Addisons had contributed to the DA's campaign, the money of the Addisons compared to the lack of it for the McUsic brothers. Money and power—the quintessential motives for a crime and the cover-up.

She and Castle watched as the Captain got off the phone with Williams's attorney and then signed the paperwork that would authorize the charges against Otis Williams to be dropped. Ryan and Esposito were bringing in Stephen Addison now.

"Nice job, Beckett," Castle commented. "Living up to the ideal of doing justice, without fear or favor."

She smiled slightly. "You too, Castle. Thanks for the help."

"See, I'm helpful!"

She rolled her eyes. "And annoying," she inserted dryly.

"You shouldn't be mean to me when I was helpful on a case," he pouted.

She had the sudden urge to kiss the pout off his lips but squelched it immediately. They were in the middle of the precinct and Captain Montgomery was in full view. Instead, she only nudged his arm teasingly and then straightened up as the Captain joined them to watch as the boys led a sullen Stephen Addison off to the holding cells.

It occurred to Kate as she briefed the Captain about the physical evidence that CSU had found that Stephen Addison, despite his clean-cut, aristocratic good looks, had the makings of quite a sociopath in him, plotting so cleverly to kill Joe McUsic.

Castle asked about what would happen to the hapless Eddie and the Captain answered, only to break off at the abrupt reminder of his friend's fall.

The DA's career was finished, wrecked. Leaving aside the complete death of his political hopes, Kate was sure that he was going to be suspended by the bar, if not actually disbarred, for his concealing the evidence and going forward with the prosecution against Otis Williams. And he would likely face criminal charges going forward for malicious prosecution, solicitation, and probably as an accessory after the fact.

"Sir, I'm sorry about your friend," she ventured. She thought about having to arrest Royce with the pang of bitter emotion, betrayal and regret and a sharp stab of loss, that the thought of Royce always evoked now.

Montgomery sighed a little as they turned away since Stephen Addison was no longer visible. "Yeah. Lou screwed up. He did but that shouldn't take away from all the good he did."

"It's unfortunate that despite all that good, he's only gonna be remembered for this one bad thing," Castle responded.

It was the truth and she knew the Captain knew it; he was too much of a realist not to, but even so, he didn't acknowledge the harsh truth in words. It was only visible in the regret that shadowed his expression before he turned back. "Nice work, you two. Good night."

Kate checked her watch before she shrugged into her jacket. "Castle, I think if we leave now, we just have time to catch the evening showing of _Forbidden Planet_."

His response was to smile and then offer his arm to her. "In that case, would you like to go on a date to the movies, Detective?" he asked with exaggerated formality.

She laughed and took his arm. "Why, yes, Mr. Castle, I would."

They walked out of the bullpen together, Kate noting out of the corner of her eye that Stephen Addison's arrest was already on the news, camera flashes going off as the screen showed a crowd of reporters pursuing the Addisons as they fought their way to a town-car.

"And then there were none," Castle murmured under his breath.

Kate blinked, confused. "What?" She remembered the Agatha Christie book by that name but couldn't imagine what Castle meant.

He glanced at her. "Oh, I was thinking about the Addisons and how they went in the space of a year from having two kids, then one, and now they've lost Stephen too. Can't imagine how they feel."

"Yeah, it's tragic for them." They couldn't be blamed for the DA's illegal actions. Wanting the DA with his long years of successful criminal prosecutions to bring their daughter's alleged killer to justice was understandable and even if they had made some implied suggestion of a quid pro quo that their continued contributions to the DA's campaign would be tied to the prosecution, that was fairly standard behavior for big contributors.

"I don't know how they'll come to terms with the fact that their son killed their daughter and was probably such a different person from what they must have thought."

"An iceberg," she commented, remembering Castle's metaphor from yesterday and in this case, it was true. The Addisons must have believed they knew their own kids but would now have had all their delusions ripped from their eyes because Lyla's and Stephen's cocaine use would necessarily come out now too. Although under the circumstances, an addiction to cocaine was meaningless.

Castle grimaced a little and she knew he was thinking of what he'd said about teens being like icebergs yesterday. It was a segue to asking about Alexis but Kate bit back the question. She didn't want to ask. If Castle wanted to talk about it, he would tell her but she didn't want to force it. Anyway, they were almost at the Angelika so they wouldn't have much time to talk now.

She dropped Castle off at the theatre to buy tickets while she fortunately found a parking spot just a couple blocks away.

The opening credits were just beginning as they slipped into the theatre, taking seats in the back, mindful of Castle's irrepressible tendency to talk during a movie.

"I love this movie," he leaned over to whisper.

She turned her head to smirk at him and then, finding him so close, gave in to impulse and kissed him quickly. Just because she could this time (unlike last time, when his very proximity combined with having to resist her attraction to him had distracted her throughout the movie.) "I know. Now sshh."

She turned back to the movie as the opening narration began.

After a few minutes, he slid his hand to rest it on her knee. She smiled a little to herself in the darkness, her heart warming. He just liked to touch her. He refrained when they were in the precinct and had learned his lesson about distracting her while she was driving (after she'd snapped at him a few times) but whenever they were together anywhere else, he liked to touch her and did unless she indicated she wanted some space. Usually subtle touches to her hand or her arm or the small of her back but still, he liked to touch her.

But then his hand started to wander, inching up her thigh by slow degrees, making her skin heat and her breath grow shallow.

Hastily, she grabbed his errant hand and moved it to his knee, although she retained her grip on his hand to soften the gesture. "Stop it, Castle," she whispered quietly. "I want to watch the movie."

"Have I mentioned that your taste in movies is hot?" he leaned over to husk in her ear, sending a faint, reflexive shiver through her in reaction to the sound of his low whisper, the tickle of his breath against her ear.

She ignored her reaction, only shushing him again, and returned her attention to the movie.

Castle, heroically, refrained from commenting any further and soon enough, Kate was pulled into the story and the characters, as she usually was. She glanced over at him occasionally when the light from the movie illuminated his face enough to see his expression, just to enjoy his clear enthusiasm, the way he mouthed his favorite lines of dialogue along with the characters.

She and Castle exchanged grins as the end credits began to roll and Kate felt one of those moments of fellowship, the sense of closeness that came from a shared joy, one of those moments that happened so often with Castle but still surprised her a little. She and Castle were so different in so many ways but somehow, in spite of their differences, they _worked_. As friends, as partners, as lovers.

She wasn't sure how much of her thoughts showed in her expression but then again, knowing how well Castle seemed to read her, she guessed probably a lot, and then he leaned in and kissed her, softly, languidly, his tongue sliding over hers, his hand coming up to cup her cheek in his hand.

The kiss ended rather abruptly as the lights came back on in the theatre and Kate startled away from him while he huffed out a breathy laugh. "Living out the cliché of making out in the back of the theatre."

She smirked at him. "Well, it is a real date this time."

"I still think it was a real date last time too."

She let him see her rolling her eyes as she stood up. "That doesn't make it true."

"It was a date," he persisted. (Because of course he would.) "And as they say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are it is a duck."

She laughed. "So you're comparing going out with me to a duck? And here I thought you were a writer."

He huffed at her in mock offense. "I'm just saying, it had all the characteristics of a date."

"Except that it _wasn't_ a date. We were friends hanging out."

"Item one: we were both single and we went out to watch a movie and then had dinner and I paid for both the tickets and dinner."

"That's because you're a multimillionaire and you refused to let me pay for the movie tickets or for dinner. Anyway, I paid for the snacks."

"Item two: it was in no way work-related."

She had to concede that.

"Item three: I accompanied you back home afterwards."

"That doesn't count," she protested. "I was still staying at the loft then so it's not like you had any choice since we were going back to the same place."

"Well, I _would_ have seen you back to your apartment if you'd still lived there."

"I still don't think that counts. Besides, you didn't kiss me goodnight."

"I don't always kiss women after one date," he declared primly.

She shot him a skeptical look.

"I don't! This one time, years ago, soon after Meredith left, I went out an awful date with a girl and by the end of the evening, I would sooner have kissed a tarantula than her."

He made a comical face of exaggerated horror and she couldn't help but laugh. "What was so bad about her?"

He gave a theatrical shudder. "She _giggled_ ," he answered as darkly as if giggling were a social solecism on par with advocating cruelty to puppies and kittens. "At everything. No matter what I said, she giggled in response and then said something like, 'oh Ricky, you're so funny.'" He pitched his voice into a high falsetto and Kate choked on a laugh.

He gave her a look. "Oh, you can laugh. Her giggle would have made nails on a chalkboard sound like a pleasant melody and you can bet that at the end of that date, I was almost ready to cut off my own ears like Van Gogh."

She gave in to her laughter and laughed until she had to lean against the side of her car to hold herself up. He gave her a narrow-eyed look but then he gave in and laughed as well.

He calmed himself sooner than she did. "I'm glad you find this description of my torment so amusing," he pretended to grumble.

"Sorry," she gasped out, not managing to sound at all sorry. "I was just picturing your face and you having to try so hard to be polite." She could picture his face. She knew the fake, somewhat strained smile he occasionally wore in public when he was trapped against his will. She'd been with him when he'd been accosted by an eager fan, the ones that Castle termed the 'loud octopus' fans, loud because they usually were, shrieking their recognition of him so that everyone in a half-block radius heard his name, and octopus-like because they were hands-y, tugging Castle into a hug before insisting on posing with him for a picture and usually wringing his hand as they enthused over how much they loved his books. Kate had gone to rescue him a couple times only to get something of the same treatment herself—the "oh my God, you're Nikki Heat!" reaction—and now Kate generally didn't try to intervene, because her being the inspiration for Nikki Heat meant that she usually made the situation worse. (Also, Kate wasn't nearly as good at faking pleasantries to total strangers like that and she detested that kind of public notice.) Castle was better at it and more experienced in extricating himself before too long and usually managed to do so while employing enough charm that the fan probably ended up half-swooning over him.

Fortunately for him and her, it didn't happen often. The vast majority of Castle's fans were star-struck enough to be respectful and polite. And even if they hadn't been, she knew that Castle honestly appreciated his fans so he generally dealt with fans with all the genuine good humor and kindness of his nature.

He only huffed in pretend disgruntlement and she managed to get her amusement under control.

"Okay, so you don't always kiss woman after one date," she conceded. "But you didn't have any reason like me giggling too much for you not to kiss me."

"Didn't we have this talk already? I didn't want to risk losing you so I wasn't going to kiss you unless I was sure you wanted it."

She hid her small smile, feeling her heart flutter. As much as she had sometimes wished that he would take the decision out of her hands and just kiss her senseless, as Lanie would put it, she couldn't deny that it did something to her to know how much he'd cared, even back then, how much he'd been holding back because he didn't want to lose having her in his life. Castle the impulsive, the risk-taker, but for her, because he cared so much about her, he didn't take the risk.

"Speaking of our first date, can we stop off at Remy's on the way for a burger? I'm hungry," he said plaintively.

Now that he mentioned it, she was hungry too. It was after 9:30 so it would certainly be a late dinner but what the heck. Their actual dinner earlier had been a hurried affair, Chinese that they and the boys had had delivered to the precinct, and then she and Castle had been interrupted and hadn't managed to finish eating because Otis Williams and his lawyer had arrived at the precinct for questioning. And after that, they'd been too distracted to even think of eating.

"Mm, and I haven't had one of their shakes in weeks," she mused aloud and he smiled at her.

That decided, she started her car and directed it towards Remy's. It wasn't directly on the way back home to the loft but it wasn't completely out of the way either.

"Item four of the list of reasons why the last time we went to the Angelika was a date," he began again and she rolled her eyes. She should have known he would return to the subject. He was persistent, she'd give him that. "And this is the last reason but I like to think it's certainly not the least important, I was already head over heels in love with you then."

Oh damn. Of all the disarming reasons. And he'd already known that he was in love with her then?

"You already knew that you loved me? When did you know?" she blurted out without even realizing she was going to.

"It was—and don't take this as encouragement to do this again—during that mummy case when you and the boys played that really mean trick on me with the coffee machine."

"You fell in love with me because I played a prank on you?"

"No!" He narrowed his eyes at her. "I told you not to take this as encouragement."

She suppressed a smile. It was so fun to tease him. "Then why?"

He lifted one shoulder into a half-shrug even as his expression softened, his gaze becoming wistful, dreamy. "You were laughing and your eyes were so bright and sparkling with green and I looked at you and I just knew that I wanted to see you smile like that every day for the rest of my life."

It was his expression, his tone, that really made her heart melt even more than his words. The closest she could come to describing it was that he occasionally used a similar tone when he was sharing some of his most precious memories of Alexis, as if every moment of the memory was a priceless jewel to be kept safe and only taken out occasionally to admire it. So much love and tenderness, mingled in with something like awe. And he was talking about _her._

He blinked and then shot her a smirk that told her he didn't feel like dwelling on sentimentality. "Your turn, Beckett. When did you know that you were in love with me? No, wait, don't tell me. It was when you saw my rugged handsomeness and charm at the _Storm Fall_ book signing."

"Hardly."

He pretended to pout. "Are you saying you didn't fall for me at first sight? But how can you resist my dashing good looks?"

She laughed aloud. Ridiculous man. "Easily, oh vain one."

He bridled in mock disgruntlement.

She hid a smile and relented. Because he really was adorable. "I knew that morning you made strawberry happy-face pancakes for the first time."

He turned to give her a soft smile but he kept his tone light. "You fell in love with my pancakes. Good to know. I'll remember that next time I do something stupid and need to make it up to you."

"Already planning ahead to the next time you make me angry?"

"First rule of a Boy Scout, Beckett, always be prepared."

She snorted. "You were never a Scout."

He grinned at her. "You remember that, huh?"

"You were being annoying. Of course I remember," she told him tartly. "I could have shot you for barging into my crime scene like that."

"Eh, I'm too cute to kill. Besides, think of all the paperwork you'd need to do if you shot me."

She had to laugh at his airy nonchalance as she found a parking spot near Remy's. "Plus I've gotten accustomed to having you around now."

He was humming idly under his breath when he joined her on the sidewalk and she smiled as she recognized the tune.

"'I've grown accustomed to her face,'" she sing-songed softly in tune with his humming.

He smiled at her as he slipped his hand into hers and continued with the lyrics. "'Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs, Are second nature to me now, Like breathing out and breathing in.'"*

He broke off as they arrived at Remy's and he opened the door for her.

Susan, the head waitress at Remy's, positively lit up at the sight of them, waving. "Detective Kate and Ricky! It's been weeks since you've been here. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about this place."

"I could never forget about you, oh, lovely Susan," Castle declared, giving the older woman one of his most charming smiles.

Kate hid a smile. The man was incorrigible but she couldn't help but appreciate the fact that he flirted so with a woman who was old enough to be his mother, using his charm not for his own purposes (although he did that too) but simply to make an older woman feel young and beautiful again. She didn't kid herself that she would accept Castle flirting with any other woman with such equanimity but then again, she also trusted that Castle wouldn't flirt with other women. He wasn't that man anymore.

Susan flapped a dismissive hand but couldn't hide her blush or the way her eyes lit up with pleasure at the words. "Pure flummery, Ricky, and don't think I don't know it." She turned to Kate. "I hope you're keeping a close eye on this one, Detective Kate. He could charm the very birds out of the trees and he knows it."

Kate laughed softly. "Oh I'm keeping an eye on him, Susan, don't worry. Someone needs to keep him out of trouble."

"Slander," Castle huffed. "I am perfectly capable of staying out of trouble."

"That's not what Alexis says," Kate retorted teasingly.

"Oh, how is little Alexis?" Susan chimed in as she ushered them into a booth and gave them menus. "It's been way too long since she's been in here." She fixed a look on Castle. "Bring her by to say hello some time soon, Ricky."

Castle nodded obediently. "I'll do that, Susan."

"You've raised a good girl in that one, Ricky," Susan told him approvingly.

For almost the first time in Kate's memory, Castle didn't preen or beam when someone praised Alexis but only managed a small smile. "I lucked out with her." It was what he usually said but the tone was off.

Kate shot him a concerned look and then hurriedly stepped in to make up for Castle's unusual taciturnity about Alexis. "We'll tell Alexis you say hello. She's doing well, just busy these days. You know she has a boyfriend now?"

Castle huffed.

Susan chuckled. "I bet Ricky doesn't like that one bit." She turned to Castle. "Don't worry too much, Ricky. Alexis is too sensible to fall for a bad boy."

"That's what I keep telling him," Kate assured Susan.

Susan smiled. "Good. You keep Ricky here in line so he doesn't scare off little Alexis's boyfriend," she said as she walked away to see to another patron who'd signaled for attention.

Kate turned to Castle. "You okay? I thought you and Alexis made up earlier."

"Oh, we made up. We both apologized and I deleted the GPS app and promised not to use it again and she told me what she'd been up to in Williamsburg and why she lied about it."

That all sounded fine. "But?"

He grimaced a little. "But now I'm worried over what she told me. Ignorance really is bliss."

"I can't believe it was anything so terrible, Castle. This is Alexis we're talking about."

"It's not that _she_ did something bad at all, which is a relief. It was her friends."

He was being uncharacteristically cryptic. "What did her friends do?"

He hesitated, glancing around the restaurant, as if double-checking that they were the only patrons within a few booths of them. It was late enough after the dinner hour that the remaining patrons were mostly over at the bar and therefore well out of hearing distance. "It was over the weekend when Alexis was hanging out with a group of friends down in Williamsburg and they—" He broke off as Susan returned with water for them.

"So what'll it be for you two tonight?" Susan asked cheerfully.

"The usual for me and a strawberry shake, thanks," Kate answered quickly. She glanced at Castle, raising a questioning brow, and then at his imperceptible nod, added, "And Rick will have his usual with a chocolate shake."

"You two are really so cute together," Susan observed and then added, "I'll get these orders right in for you."

"Thanks, Susan," Castle answered with an attempt at his usual winning smile that would probably have fooled anyone except for her, Martha, and Alexis.

The moment Susan walked away, his smile vanished.

"What did Alexis's friends do in Williamsburg?" she prompted gently.

"They wanted to try shoplifting," he answered, his voice lowering even further on the last word until it was barely louder than a breath.

"Alexis said she couldn't but they all did and laughed at her about it but anyway, the reason Alexis went back to Williamsburg yesterday was to go back to that shop and leave some money on the counter to make up for what her friends had stolen the day before."

"Good for Alexis," Kate nodded approvingly.

He managed a brief flicker of a smile. "Yeah, I'm actually kinda proud of her."

"You should be. Alexis resisted peer pressure and that's hard to do, especially at her age. I couldn't do it when I was her age."

He gave her a skeptical look. "I have a hard time imagining you giving way to peer pressure, Beckett."

"You shouldn't. I was an insecure teen once too, Castle."

"What did you have to be insecure about? You're smart, gorgeous, kind, funny."

She couldn't help but smile at his matter-of-fact litany of compliments. "I think you're biased, Castle, and anyway you didn't know me back then. I went through a gawky phase and I was self-conscious about my braces when I had them, to say nothing of the usual concerns about not being cool enough."

He wrinkled his nose. "You have a point. I was never one of the cool kids in high school either, not like Dam—" he abruptly broke off, his expression darkening, before he finished more quietly, "not like Damian."

Damn Damian Westlake anyway.

"What's bothering you so much about what Alexis told you, Castle?" she asked wanting to take his mind off the memory of what Damian had done.

He grimaced and sighed. "I don't like knowing that Alexis has friends who were shoplifting. She wouldn't tell me which of these so-called friends of hers were involved but they sound like bad influences, trying to make Alexis shoplift as well. She shouldn't have to be sneaking back to stores to leave money on counters. She could get into trouble herself even if she's just trying to clean up her friends' messes. And if they're shoplifting, what other kinds of trouble are they going to be getting into?"

"Castle, they're teenagers, they're probably just experimenting with breaking the rules and shoplifting can be one of those stupid things that make teens feel cool, the hint of danger from doing something illegal. And to be fair, it's not nearly as dangerous as doing drugs or playing Russian roulette the way those prep school kids were doing in that one case a couple years back."

He practically shuddered at the memory of that case. "But that's the problem. How do I know that these friends of Alexis aren't going to be moving on to doing drugs or something?"

"You know who Alexis's closest friends are, Castle, and the sorts of kids Alexis is generally friends with. Does it really seem like Alexis would be friends with kids who were real, serious trouble-makers? I think she's too sensible for that," she told him reassuringly.

"But shoplifting, Beckett? Breaking curfew and ditching class to hang out at a mall or something I understand but stealing seems a little much."

Castle was generally an easy-going parent but as much as he teased Alexis about not getting into trouble, she also knew that he was glad and proud that Alexis was so sensible and responsible, torn between his wish for Alexis to learn to live life to the fullest and his understandable need to keep Alexis as safe and sheltered as possible. And then because Alexis had almost never given him much reason to worry, whenever she did do something that seemed remotely like trouble-making, he tended to over-react, his imagination getting the better of him.

"I think you're making too big a deal out of this," she told him mildly. "A little shoplifting on a dare is a fairly common thing for teens to try out. Didn't you or your friends ever try it when you were in high school?"

"My mother taught me not to steal," he answered loftily and then added, in a more usual tone, "Besides which, the boys at Edgewyck prided themselves on being rich. They were the type to buy everything in sight just to prove that they could. Their rebellions tended to involve girls, cigarettes, and alcohol."

She supposed that made sense, from the sort of place that Edgewyck had been according to what Castle had told her.

"Well, maybe you never tried shoplifting but some of my friends and I tried it once when I was in high school."

He gaped at her. "Shoplifting, Beckett? Really? You?"

She smirked a little at his shock. "Don't look like that, Castle. It was a stupid dare between my friends and me for all of us to take some little thing. My parents never knew anything about it." She paused and then added lightly, "Don't tell my dad."

"What did you take?"

She couldn't help but laugh a little. "It was a silly _Star Trek_ pen, one of those where part of the tube of the pen was clear and inside was a little miniature of the Enterprise and if you tilted the pen one way or the other, the Enterprise would move. I think it was worth a couple bucks at most. I slipped it into my backpack and then walked out of the store." Such a nonsensical thing to do, now that she thought about it, but at the time, it had seemed so daring to actually steal, in one of those instances of teenage reasoning—or lack thereof—that Kate could only laugh at now.

The beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "You were a geek. A felonious geek," he amended after a moment."

She laughed. "So now you know the deep dark secret of my criminal past, Castle," she teased.

He clicked his tongue a few times in mock disapproval. "I know. And you the future cop. Beckett, I expected better of you."

She stuck her tongue out at him, which, of course, was exactly when Susan reappeared with their meals. Damn it.

Castle dissolved into laughter and Kate shot him a narrow-eyed look.

"Do you two need anything else?" Susan asked, smiling indulgently at Castle, who was red-faced from attempting to control his laughter.

"No, thanks, Susan, we're fine," Kate assured her.

"Enjoy your burgers," Susan told them with a quick smile before she moved on.

Kate shook a fry at him mock-threateningly. "I think you're a bad influence on me."

He smirked. "Didn't you know that already?"

"Yes, I knew already," she conceded, smiling in spite of herself. "But my _point_ was that shoplifting once on a dare as it sounds like Alexis's friends did isn't that unusual. It's just one of those stupid teen rebellions so don't think of it like it's an automatic slippery slope to a life of crime. After all, I turned out okay, didn't I?" she quipped.

"More than okay," he agreed, smiling.

"See? I rest my case."

He laughed. "All right, Beckett, you've convinced me." He sobered. "Thanks."

She reached over and squeezed his hand briefly. "Anytime, Castle." She loved knowing that she could reassure him when he was fretting over Alexis.

For a long second, as their eyes met and held, they simply smiled at each other and Kate felt warmth bubble up inside her chest, remembering how Lanie had said they were lucky. They really were.

Then the moment ended and they both turned their attention to their food, conversation being sidelined in favor of eating.

She'd been hungrier than she'd realized. She closed her eyes in sheer pleasure as she took the first sip of her shake and then bit into her burger.

"Mm, this hits the spot," Castle said with satisfaction as he swallowed the first bite of his burger.

"Definitely," Kate agreed.

As usual, Castle finished his burger before she did and then, having finished his fries, reached over and stole some of hers.

She quirked her eyebrows at him teasingly. "Really, Castle? You're stealing my food after you practically had a conniption at the very idea that Alexis's friends tried shoplifting?"

He smirked and stole another fry. "It's not stealing if I do it openly; it's annexing," he retorted airily.

She rolled her eyes. "Somehow I don't think anyone in Burglary would agree with you on that. I know people. You might want to be more careful about stealing my food," she told him with mock seriousness.

"May I have some of your fries, please, Detective Beckett?" he asked with exaggerated formality.

"Yes, you may," she parroted his tone and then added teasingly, "Now, was that so hard?"

He promptly put on a beleaguered expression. "Yes, it was," he pouted.

She only laughed. Silly, adorable man. "Poor baby," she mocked.

His expression changed, abruptly softening, becoming absent but she oddly had the sense that he was still entirely focused on her. "That's the look," he murmured quietly.

"It's what look?"

"Your expression, when you laugh like that—that's the look that made me realize I was in love with you."

She felt her heart flutter, a blush rising in her cheeks. She didn't know how he did it, really. She wasn't some shy ingénue who blushed easily from a man looking at her. She was a cop; she'd spent time in Vice and seen plenty of the seamiest side of life and human nature. But oh the way he looked at her sometimes…

She really had no idea what to say. How could she possibly respond to such a statement? But she tried to cudgel her brain into some semblance of working order and finally managed to say, with rather forced lightness, "Convenient, then, that you can make me laugh." (He did make her laugh. She loved that about him.)

He smiled. "I pride myself on it," he responded quietly and then added, after a brief pause, his tone becoming brisk, "You should finish your burger, Beckett."

She took him at his word and did so, while he "annexed" more of her fries.

While she ate, he filled the silence with some of his usual patter, first enjoying quite shamelessly how much his mystery writer poker group buddies were going to envy him getting to work on this case and then shifting to essentially brainstorming aloud about the courtroom mystery that he would write based on the McUsic case. He was such a storyteller. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that Alexis's bedtime stories when she was little must have been quite something. Kate made the occasional snarky comment but otherwise, she indulged him in his prattle. Because she, well, she liked to listen to him talk, at least in these idle times when she wasn't at work, liked to hear the way his mind worked. (Not that she would tell him that. She wasn't about to encourage him.)

Castle's story-spinning lasted for the rest of their late dinner until after Susan brought the check over.

"No top-secret CIA conspiracy, Castle? I'm shocked," she teased.

"Every story can't involve a CIA conspiracy or it'll start to get predictable."

"And of course you can't have that happening."

"Predictability is the third rail of mystery writing," he told her loftily as he paid the bill. Kate had, for the most part, given up on trying to pay when they went out to eat. She wasn't entirely comfortable with that but she'd given way because she knew how much it meant to Castle, part of his love of taking care of the people he cared about.

"Now, don't leave it so long between visits, you two," Susan scolded them mildly.

"We won't," Kate assured her.

"I could never keep myself away from seeing you," Castle declared.

Susan laughed. "You don't fool me, Ricky. I know you come here for the burgers."

"Well, I wouldn't come nearly so often for the burgers if it weren't for the pleasure of seeing your lovely face," Castle proclaimed flamboyantly. Kate hid her smile; he was definitely Martha Rodgers's son.

Susan flapped a dismissive hand at him but couldn't hide the way her eyes brightened, her cheeks flushing with pleasure. "Oh, get along with you, Ricky. Save your flattery for Detective Kate. You two take care of yourselves now and don't forget to bring little Alexis with you some time soon."

"Bye, Susan."

Kate waved her farewell to the older woman as they left Remy's and slipped her hand into his, partly for warmth since the March night was a little chilly and mostly just because she could. Because this time, it really was a date and he was kind of adorable.

"A dollar for your thoughts, Beckett."

She smirked at him. "A whole dollar, Castle? How extravagant of you," she quipped.

He shrugged. "Your thoughts are always worth more than just a penny to me."

"I wasn't thinking about anything much. I just… like you, that's all."

He laughed softly and dropped a kiss on her hair. "That's good because I like you too, Beckett."

She smiled, warmth blossoming in her chest. It was silly, irrational really, for the words to affect her so but for some reason, at that moment, it seemed… important. They liked each other and maybe that was what made their relationship, that she still thought made little sense on paper what with all their differences, work. As much as Castle could annoy her at times, they genuinely enjoyed each other's company and maybe it was as simple—and as complicated—as that.

 _~To be continued…~_

* The lyrics Castle and Beckett sing are from "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" from the musical _My Fair Lady_ , by Lerner and Loewe.


	26. Chapter 25: Slice of Death

Author's Note: This chapter takes place during "Slice of Death," so as usual, expect some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 25_

Kate opened the door to the loft only to be brought up short at the sight of Alexis and Ashley sitting on the couch making out. "Oh. Sorry," she blurted out awkwardly, hovering in the doorway of the loft as if unsure whether to actually come in or not. Thank goodness Castle wasn't with her because he would probably have had a coronary. As it was, Kate found herself dithering uncharacteristically. How exactly was a person supposed to react when she walked in on her boyfriend's teenage daughter making out on the couch? Get upset? Ignore it?

Ashley scrambled away from Alexis, looking alarmed. "Uh, hi, Detective Beckett. It's, um, nice to see you again," he stuttered, not quite fluently, his gaze darting behind Kate as if expecting Castle to appear, brandishing a gun or something.

"Kate! I— I thought Dad had a meeting," Alexis blurted out, hurriedly straightening her shirt and smoothing her hair.

"He does," Kate answered a little tentatively, finally moving inside enough to close the door as she realized she'd been standing there for something like a minute. "Hi, Ashley," she greeted the boy a little belatedly.

"I should go," Ashley blurted out. "I… uh… need to leave."

"It's okay, Ashley," Kate quickly spoke up, forcing her feet to move, heading to the kitchen so she could give them a semblance of privacy. "You don't need to leave just because of me."

"No, Detective. I was just about to leave anyway. Really," Ashley answered hurriedly. He turned to Alexis, his voice softening. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

Alexis glanced at Kate. "I'll just walk you to the door, Ash," she answered quickly.

Kate opened the fridge so its door conveniently blocked her view of the front door of the loft and pretended a fascination with its contents while she played a reluctant eavesdropper to the two teenagers' goodbye.

Ashley's voice was quiet. "Listen, about Lauren's party, I don't have to go. It's really okay."

"I'll think about it but I think you should."

There was a brief pause in which Kate guessed that Ashley had kissed Alexis and then she heard the boy say, "I'll text you later. Night, Alexis." He raised his voice to a more normal tone. "Bye, Detective Beckett."

Kate emerged from her chilly hide-out and closed the fridge door. "Bye, Ashley."

And then Ashley fled—there was really no other word for it. Poor boy, Kate thought, with a rather sympathetic grimace.

Alexis was still blushing as she turned away from the door and wouldn't quite meet Kate's eyes. "Did you have a nice day, Kate?"

The question sounded awkward so Kate bit back a laugh and answered, gently, "It was fine, thanks."

There was a brief, uncomfortable pause before Kate headed into Castle's office to put away her gun, deliberately taking her time about it in order to give Alexis a couple minutes to get over her embarrassment.

When Kate emerged, Alexis was in the kitchen, taking out a soda from the fridge. She still didn't look entirely at ease but her blush had somewhat faded.

"Sorry." They both spoke at once, looked at each other, and then gave rueful little laughs that somehow served to ease the awkwardness.

"Sorry about that," Alexis spoke up first. "I didn't mean… I didn't invite Ashley over just because I thought Dad was going to be out," she hurriedly said. "I don't want you to think I was trying to sneak around. It's just… we had some things to talk about. I'd forgotten about Dad's meeting until Ash and I got here and then, well, he was already here and I—I guess I'm just so used to thinking of you and my dad together that I forgot that you wouldn't need to go to Dad's meeting too."

"It really is okay, Alexis. I didn't assume you were trying to sneak around. I hope I didn't scare Ashley off."

"Oh, no, Kate," Alexis said quickly. "We were done talking. He really was going to leave. He was just… um, kissing me goodbye," she finished in a rush, her voice quiet, as she blushed again.

Kate hid a smile. Yes, she could imagine that. She remembered being a teenager herself. More recently, she knew perfectly well how what was supposed to be a quick goodbye kiss could linger and turn into several kisses and how a kiss that was supposed to last seconds could turn into minutes; she and Castle were not exactly good at keeping their own kisses brief when they were in the privacy of her apartment or the loft.

"I really do understand, Alexis. I remember being 16 too," she assured the girl.

Alexis hesitated and then added, "That's not—um, I mean, kissing's not the only thing Ashley and I do."

"I never thought it was. I know you're about more than just boys and… making out." It was Kate's turn to hesitate, not sure she wanted or was even ready to have this sort of conversation with Alexis but she owed it to Castle, if nothing else. "Alexis, you know you can talk to me anytime about anything, including boys, if there's anything you… don't feel comfortable talking to your dad or your grandmother about," she finally ventured obliquely.

Alexis blushed redder than her hair. "No," she blurted out immediately and then added, wincing a little, "I mean, I know that, Kate and I appreciate it. But it's… okay for now. Ash and I aren't… we aren't…" she apparently gave up on finishing that sentence and just mumbled, again, "No."

For all the incoherence of it, Kate understood and couldn't quite help but be relieved. She knew Alexis didn't need the basic birds-and-the-bees conversation but she wasn't sure she was exactly ready to talk to Alexis about the subject of when to have sex. And it didn't help that she knew Castle's preferred answer to the question would be something like when Alexis was 25, if not never. Castle's answer might not be realistic but Alexis was Castle's daughter, not Kate's, and Kate didn't feel comfortable with going against Castle's instincts and wishes where Alexis was concerned, not even in this where Castle wasn't going to be entirely rational.

With some gratitude and sympathetic to Alexis's clear embarrassment, Kate changed the subject, her tone becoming brisk. "Well, I'm hungry and I'm not sure how long your dad's meeting is supposed to go so why don't we just get dinner for ourselves? What do you feel like eating?"

Alexis brightened up, her expression easing, as she answered. "I'm hungry too. I know we have plenty of sandwich fixings and that'll be quick and easy, if that's okay."

"That sounds good to me."

They chatted desultorily as they prepared their sandwiches, working side by side in easy harmony. And Kate was thankful that she and Alexis returned fairly quickly to their usual camaraderie, the awkwardness of the earlier conversation fading.

They ate their sandwiches perched on the stools at the kitchen island, not bothering to sit at the dining table. Alexis spoke easily about her classes but Kate noted that she didn't, unusually, say much about her friends. That was somewhat concerning, especially when combined with what Kate remembered Ashley saying about Lauren's party. Lauren Ammons was one of Alexis's closest friends and she was throwing a big party for her upcoming birthday, which Alexis had been anticipating for weeks. (It helped that Lauren's parents were rich and so were quite open to throwing such a big party and renting a rooftop party venue for their daughter's 17th birthday, even if it did fall in the middle of the week.)

"You must be looking forward to Lauren's party," she commented as casually as possible. "That's tomorrow, right? Sounds like it'll be a lot of fun."

Alexis's expression fell, her eyes clouding over. "I don't think I'll be going," Alexis muttered.

Kate didn't need to pretend surprise. "Why not? You've been looking forward to it for weeks."

"Lauren came up to me after class today and in front of everyone, she disinvited me. Ashley and everyone else are still invited, just not me. It was humiliating."

"But I thought Lauren's been your friend for years."

"She _was_ ," Alexis answered morosely. "But she's been acting really different lately, making these snarky comments and twisting my words around to mean something totally different to what she knew I meant and laughing sarcastically when I say something. And now this."

Kate made a sympathetic face. It hurt to lose a friendship and it was harder in high school because of how everything was magnified by teens and the fish-bowl nature of high school gossip, made worse these days with social media. She suddenly remembered the argument she and Maddy had had in senior year over Brent Edwards, the reason why they had basically stopped talking to each other and then lost contact entirely once they had graduated high school, until last year. Kate made a mental note to arrange to meet up with Maddy some time soon.

"I'm so sorry, Alexis. And she hasn't said anything about why she's acting like this?"

"I tried asking but she wouldn't talk to me, only said in this really mean voice that if I didn't know, she wasn't going to tell me." Alexis sighed heavily. "I hate this, Kate. It's not just that I thought Lauren was a friend but now everyone is going to be going to Lauren's party but me. I feel like a leper."

"Ashley said he was okay with not going to the party if you don't go, though, didn't he?"

"Just because I have leprosy doesn't mean he should," Alexis flashed with a momentary return of spirit.

"What do you think you'll do then?" Kate asked gently.

"I don't know," Alexis answered glumly. "On the one hand, I don't want to miss out on this party. Lauren's parents rented out this rooftop party area for the party and there's going to be a live band and everything. But on the other hand, I don't feel as if I can just crash the party when _everyone_ there will know that I'm crashing."

"Maybe you should try seeing if you can get Lauren alone sometime during school tomorrow and just talk to her. Not a confrontation or anything, just tell her you're sorry for anything you might have done and you want to make things better," Kate suggested a little tentatively.

"I didn't do anything so I don't see why I should say I'm sorry," Alexis retorted rather petulantly. " _She's_ the one who's been acting like such a jerk."

Kate suppressed a sigh. "I understand that, Alexis, but sometimes you need to swallow your pride and rise above your hurt feelings in order to preserve a friendship. And I think you've been friends with Lauren for long enough that your friendship is worth trying to save."

Alexis made a face. "Yeah, I suppose. I just don't know why she's doing this."

"Has it occurred to you that she might be jealous?" Kate ventured.

"Jealous? Of what?"

"She might be jealous of Ashley," Kate suggested. "A couple of my friends went through something similar when I was your age. Two girls who'd been really close started arguing all the time and it turned out that one of them was just jealous because the other was spending so much time with her boyfriend and she felt like she'd been abandoned."

Alexis scoffed a little. "That's silly. It's not a competition. Just because I started going out with Ashley doesn't mean I dumped all my friends."

"No, it doesn't," Kate agreed, "but feelings aren't logical. And you know, you probably have been spending less time with Lauren since you've been dating Ashley, right?"

Alexis nodded. "Yeah but Ashley's my boyfriend. Of course I'm spending a lot of time with him."

"Well, maybe Lauren feels like she's lost your friendship because you aren't spending time with her anymore. At any rate, you should try talking to her. Find out why she's acting like this, at least, and maybe you can fix it."

Alexis smiled, looking more cheerful. "I'll try. Thanks, Kate."

Kate returned the girl's smile. "Anytime, Alexis."

Alexis chatted more easily after that, talking about how Ashley was still fretting as he waited to hear back from colleges and about going to prom with Ashley in a few weeks.

They were just clearing up after dinner when the door to the loft opened and Castle walked in. Kate noted with some concern that his face looked tight with irritation but his expression eased, his eyes lighting up, the moment he saw the two of them. "Good evening and what are my two favorite ladies up to tonight?"

"Hi, Dad."

"Hi, pumpkin," he greeted her, giving her a quick half-hug and pressing a kiss to her hair. He kept his arm around Alexis as he looked at Kate. "Hi, Beckett."

Kate bit back a smirk. It amused her when Castle tried to play it cool in greeting her, as he did when they were in the precinct or, like now, when Alexis was around. He tried, so hard, to sound entirely casual but he really wasn't that subtle (a ninja, Castle was not) and so his tone usually ended up sounding oddly stilted.

"Hi yourself, Castle."

"Did you eat, Dad?"

"Not yet," Castle answered. "I take it you didn't bother to wait for me." He pretended to pout.

"We didn't know how long your meeting was going to last or if it would involve dinner," Alexis explained.

Castle smiled at her. "That's fine, Alexis. I'll just throw something together for myself."

"We had sandwiches and there are still plenty of sandwich fixings. That okay with you, Dad?"

Kate hid a smile. These not-that-infrequent times when Alexis tried to take care of Castle, fussing over him like a little mother hen, tickled Kate. She knew that Castle was actually more capable of taking care of himself and Alexis than he appeared but she also knew that it amused him and made him almost burst with pride when Alexis tried to take care of him so he let the role reversal continue.

"That sounds great but I think I can handle making a sandwich, Alexis," Castle said, affectionate laughter threading his voice.

"You say that but then you nearly sliced off your fingers when you were dicing tomatoes last year after you got cursed by that mummy," Alexis reminded him.

Castle made a face at her. "Okay, so you have a point but I didn't actually slice off my fingers." He raised his hand and waggled said fingers at her. "See? I'm fine."

"And then there was that time you tried to deep-fry a turkey," Alexis went on as if he hadn't spoken.

"You are never going to let me live that down, are you?" he asked with a sigh. He turned to Kate. "A man has one accident…"

Kate laughed at his beleaguered expression. "I'm sure you've had more than one accident, Castle."

"He has," Alexis agreed.

"Don't you have homework to do, Alexis?"

"Yes, but…"

"It's okay, Alexis. Go do your homework. I'll make sure your Dad eats without hurting himself," Kate interposed, ignoring Castle's huff at this implication of his helplessness.

"Oh, thanks, Kate," Alexis smiled and gave Kate a quick hug. "And thanks for the talk about the whole Lauren situation. It helped. Enjoy your dinner, Dad."

"Yes, daughter," Castle said with exaggerated obedience.

Alexis went upstairs and Castle slid his arms around Kate's waist, tugging her closer to him so he could kiss her. "Mm, hi," he murmured. "Have I mentioned that I really love being able to come home to you?"

She smirked at him. "If that's your way of saying you want me to turn into a housewife, that ain't never gonna happen," she quipped ungrammatically.

He scoffed. "I don't want that. You're my badass Beckett and I want you to stay that way."

She smiled. "Hmm, I think I can manage that," she told him just before she kissed him. Only to have the kiss break off abruptly as Castle's stomach growled.

She burst out laughing as he directed a glare at his stomach. "Really?" he demanded of his stomach.

"Come on, Castle, let's get some food into you," she grinned.

He pretended to pout but then he waved her off and put together a sandwich for himself and then settled beside her at the island to eat.

"So, what was that Alexis mentioned about the Lauren situation? Is something going on with her?" he asked after he swallowed the first bite of his sandwich.

Of course Castle had a right to know. Kate briefly explained what was going on, watching as dismay crimped his brow as he listened.

"I can understand why she doesn't want to crash the party but I can just call Lauren's mom up and get the invitation reinstated."

Kate put a hand on his arm. "No, Castle, you really shouldn't do that."

He frowned. "Why not?"

"Because then Alexis will look like a tattle-tale to all her friends."

"But—"

"Think about it," Kate went on. "When you were in high school and being pestered by boys like Peyton Cabot Harrison, would you have had Martha call up one of their parents to stop it?"

He blinked. "No, of course not, but—"

"But nothing, Castle. It's the same thing."

"Every instinct in my body is telling me to protect her."

"I know that but when it comes to teenagers, not even you can protect her. Alexis is going to need to learn to deal with backstabbing and betrayal her entire life. She's going to have to learn to rise above all that."

"Do you know you are annoyingly rational when it comes to Alexis," he pretended to grumble.

"Why, thank you," she said wryly. "I'll take that as a compliment."

He huffed but his eyes were amused.

"How did your meeting go?" she asked instead. "You looked a little upset when you walked in." The meeting had been for Castle to go over the first mock-up of sketches for the Derrick Storm graphic novel and she wondered if the sketches hadn't been up to Castle's standards.

"It is getting harder and harder to hide things from you. Are you sure you're not telepathic?"

"Do you want to hide things from me?"

"No, but you're intimidating enough without a superpower like telepathy. With telepathy, you'd be downright terrifying." He pretended to cower.

She laughed. "I'm not telepathic so you can relax. I just know you. So how was the meeting?"

"The meeting itself was fine. But Gina was lying in wait and ambushed me as I was leaving the building to nag me about the deadline for the first draft of the next Nikki Heat book."

"I thought the deadline wasn't until May."

"It's not but Gina believes in the principle of nagging early and often. I mean, yes, I've been late with the first drafts for the last couple books but…" He grimaced. "I suppose—I know she means well but Gina and I just rub each other the wrong way. Why I ever thought we should marry is beyond me. I must have been insane."

Kate opened her mouth and then closed it again, not quite sure how to respond to this. She might occasionally wish, foolishly and irrationally, that Castle hadn't been married and divorced twice already but she didn't blame him and she could, when she forced herself to think about it in a detached way, see what Castle had seen in Gina.

Gina was, at least superficially, Castle's type of woman, pretty, smart, independent. (Castle might have been willing to have flings with brainless bimbos but he appreciated brains in women and he didn't like women who were too clingy. Kate liked that about him too; she'd met enough male chauvinists to appreciate that Castle was not one.) And Gina was sensible in her own way so Kate could understand why Castle would have thought that Gina would make a good role model and maternal figure for Alexis.

Kate decided after a moment to tactfully ignore what Castle had said about Gina and only asked, "So the sketches for the graphic novel looked okay?"

He blinked and then his entire expression lit up. Well, that had certainly distracted him nicely. "They were so cool, Beckett! I gave the artist—this young kid who looks barely older than Alexis although he swears he's actually 27—some minor pointers to make Derrick Storm look more like how I pictured him but otherwise, things were good. A graphic novel based on my work is a dream come true and from the mock-up of it, it is going to be absolutely awesome!"

He was all but bouncing on the stool as he enthused about it. Kate hid a smile and let him geek out. (Anyway, as much as she played it cool, she had to admit that the idea of a Derrick Storm graphic novel had given her a few thrills too.)

* * *

The sound of her phone ringing jerked Kate to muzzy consciousness as she flung out an arm and blindly reached for the phone. "Beckett," she answered, her voice not much more than a mumble. She suppressed a groan as she heard the voice of Dispatch giving her the address of the latest crime scene but only answered, "Right, thank you," before she hung up.

The clock on her phone's display showed that it was 5:41 a.m.

Beside her, the lump on the bed that was Castle stirred. "B'kett? Wassit?" he mumbled.

In spite of herself, Kate's stomach flipped a little at the husky, sleep-fogged sound of his voice. His husky, sleepy voice wasn't that far removed from his husky, sexy voice so her body had a Pavlovian reaction to either one now. She ignored it as she pushed herself upright, perforce dislodging Castle's arm that had been lying heavily across her.

Once sitting up, she turned to look down at Castle's still, recumbent form and then bent to brush her lips against his cheek. "We have a case, Castle," she said quietly against his ear.

His only answer was a protesting groan.

She left him to struggle up from the depths of sleep while she slipped into the bathroom.

He still hadn't stirred by the time she finished getting dressed. She moved to his side of the bed, touching his shoulder as she bent over him. "Castle."

He stirred and turned over. "A body dropped?" he mumbled, his voice still gravelly.

"Yeah." She cupped his cheek, his face rough with morning stubble, in an unusually tender gesture. He was just so cute in the mornings when he was waking up, his hair sticking out in all directions, as he blinked like a bear emerging from hibernation. "You don't have to come, Castle. You can just meet me at the precinct later."

He lifted a hand to rub his eyes and pushed himself up onto his elbow. "No, no, I'll come," he mumbled, even as the words were distorted by a yawn. "Just give me a minute."

"You're sure? You really don't have to if you want to sleep more."

"Just make me coffee."

She smiled at his rather piteous tone and dropped a kiss on his forehead. "Okay."

He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and she left his room, pausing to retrieve her gun, and then made a beeline to the coffee machine, making the coffee stronger than usual.

Castle might not be much of a morning person but once he was awake, he was generally fairly efficient about getting ready so the coffee had just barely finished percolating when he emerged from his office, fully dressed and appearing more alert.

She prepared their coffees in two travel mugs while Castle dashed off a note to leave for Alexis and then they were heading out the door.

Given the early morning wake-up call, they both inhaled their coffees and had already finished them by the time they arrived at the crime scene, parking a few blocks away.

"The crime scene is at Authentic Nick's?" Castle exclaimed as they approached.

"Is this Authentic Nick's or Terrific Nick's?" Kate wondered since she could never keep the various Nick's straight, noting the crime scene tape strung up around the entrance and the scattered bystanders gawking, although there weren't many considering the hour.

Castle proceeded to list the different Nick's pizza places, whether Authentic or Terrific or Both.

The place still had a lingering barbecue smell, making Kate aware that they hadn't eaten anything yet.

"What's the difference?" Kate asked Castle of all the various pizza places.

"The difference," Lanie interjected, "is that this one has a dead body in the oven."

Kate gaped at the oven—on second thought, maybe she wasn't that hungry anymore—and was aware of Castle doing the same before turning to her. "And you thought I should miss out on this one," he said with mock reproach.

She ignored him as she got nearer to the oven. "That is really…" She trailed off, not quite sure how to phrase it. Unique. Twisted.

"Well-done," Castle inserted, finishing for her.

"Another couple hours maybe," Lanie riposted without missing a beat. "But luckily for me, he's only half-baked."

Oh god, now Castle's penchant for puns was rubbing off on Lanie too.

Kate directed a look at Lanie and Lanie sobered and returned to business, estimating that the body went in the oven sometime after 2 a.m. The cause of death, thankfully, was not the oven but a stab wound.

Kate was not optimistic about being able to get an ID on the victim given the state of the body, which didn't bode well for the case, but they started looking into Authentic-Nick-whose-name-wasn't-actually-Nick and his employees and then the other Nicks.

They lucked out in getting an ID on the body and she could tell that Castle was a little shaken to realize that it was someone he'd known of and met once, Gordon Burns, a reporter whose writing Castle had admired.

A reporter on some mysterious story who ended up getting killed. They spent a long day trying to figure out what Burns had been looking into that might get him killed but finally had to call it a night.

Castle was unusually silent as they left the precinct and she glanced at him. "You okay?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, just thinking about Gordon Burns and his daughter, the way she sat beside him coloring while he signed books. She wasn't that much older than Alexis and I mentioned that to Burns when he noticed me smiling at his little girl."

"Did Alexis ever go with you to book signings?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah, a few times when I couldn't find anyone to watch her." He smiled a small, tender smile. "I never liked to do it, didn't want to expose her to the public like that, but she always behaved well. I usually bribed her with ice cream or something afterwards but I don't really think I needed to." He sobered. "I can't imagine what it was like for Burns to lose his daughter."

"Yeah," she agreed quietly and reached over to squeeze Castle's knee briefly. She knew that part of Gordon Burns's life would resonate more personally with him.

They spent the rest of the drive back to the loft in silence, rather unusually for them, but they were both tired after the early morning call and the long day, and she suspected Castle was still reflecting on Gordon Burns and his daughter.

But then they arrived back at the loft and all thought of anyone else's daughter or of anyone else at all vanished from both their minds at the sight of an obviously distraught Alexis sitting on the couch while Martha tried to comfort her.

"Alexis! What happened?" Castle asked immediately.

"Alexis decided to crash Lauren's party," Martha answered for Alexis.

"And I take it that the party-crashing did not go so well," Castle guessed gently as he sat down on Alexis's other side and slipped his arm around her.

Kate followed him, sitting on the armchair next to the couch.

Alexis looked up and met Kate's eyes briefly. "I tried to talk to her during school today, like you suggested, Kate, but she refused and wouldn't talk to me. So I thought I'd try going to the party and maybe, maybe try to talk to her there but then it was a disaster and now I don't know if I even want to try to be friends with her again since none of this would have happened if Lauren wasn't the most conniving bitch in the entire world."

Kate started a little at Alexis's rare use of bad language.

"Whoa," Castle exclaimed quietly.

Martha lifted a hand. "It's warranted."

"When the band was performing, Lauren brought Ashley up on stage with her and she kissed him, in front of everyone."

"Bitch!" Castle blurted out and then cringed.

Kate nudged him with her knee and leaned forward, reaching out to clasp Alexis's hand in both of hers. "Oh, Alexis…"

"How could she do this to me? To Ashley?" Alexis demanded with a sudden, renewed flare of anger.

"What did Ashley do?" Kate asked quietly.

"He was mortified. He ran off stage and he was apologizing a thousand times and said he had no idea she was going to do that. But it's like she's been trying to break us up this whole time." She sniffled a little. "It's been her master plan."

"Well, she didn't succeed, darling," Martha said consolingly. "You and Ashley are stronger than ever and she looks like a fool."

Alexis made a face. "Yeah. I wish that were true. But according to the Internet, Ashley cheated on me. She already posted the pictures of them kissing all over her website." Alexis sniffled again. "It's a nightmare."

Castle sighed and tugged Alexis into his arms and she buried her face in his shoulder. He pressed his lips to Alexis's hair and met Kate's eyes, giving her a helpless look.

Kate gave him a small, sympathetic grimace. She hated this too, the sight of Alexis's tear-stained face wrenching her heart. And she hated more the sense of helplessness because there was nothing she could do or say to fix this or make Alexis feel any better.

Castle stroked Alexis's hair and murmured soothing nothings and after a little while, Martha touched Alexis's shoulder. "Now, darling, why don't you change out of your clothes and into your pajamas so you'll be more comfortable?"

Alexis straightened up, swiping at her damp cheeks. "Yeah, okay," she agreed rather dully.

"Do you want some ice cream?" Castle offered.

"Or some hot chocolate?" Kate spoke up. She felt a sharp surge of grief at the words, one of her occasional moments of missing her mom so much it felt like a physical pain in her chest. Her mom had made hot chocolate for her when she was upset. She remembered times she'd come home in tears because of an argument with a friend, breaking up with a boyfriend, the time she'd sprained her ankle and been in tears over the pain.

Alexis looked over at her. "Hot chocolate might be nice," she answered, not with any enthusiasm but it was still acceptance, albeit an apathetic one.

Kate squeezed Alexis's hand. "Okay. I'll get it ready while you change."

Martha shepherded Alexis upstairs while Kate headed to the kitchen, followed by Castle, who hovered and then pulled her into his arms once she set the milk on the stove to start heating it.

"Thank you, Kate," he murmured against her hair.

"You don't have to thank me, Castle. You know I love Alexis."

He gave her one of his soft smiles, the one that existed mostly as the tender light in his eyes. "You're amazing, you know that."

She tucked her face against his throat and then kissed his chin softly. "My mom used to make hot chocolate for me when I was upset. It was one of our little things, my mom's way of making me feel better," she told him quietly, surprising herself a little. She hadn't realized she was going to share the memory but somehow, in that moment, the words had just come. Talking about her mom was painful, still, but it was easier with him.

His only answer was to kiss her, softly, and cup her cheek with his hand, but then the milk started to bubble and she had to turn her attention to the stove.

She was just stirring the hot chocolate when Alexis emerged, in her pajamas, her hair tied back.

Kate and Castle watched as Alexis sipped her hot chocolate but neither of them pressed Alexis to talk anymore and Kate couldn't think of anything to say. She wasn't good with words, with comforting platitudes, not really. Dealing with the victims' families was the hardest part of her job and she had gotten better at it, her own experience lending her empathy, but this was different. She didn't have a job to do here, didn't know how to make things better for Alexis and wasn't really sure she could.

Once Alexis was done with her hot chocolate, Castle tugged her back into his arms, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "You sure there's nothing else I can do to help?" he murmured.

Alexis went willingly into her dad's hug, nestling her head against his shoulder. "Just this. This always helps," she mumbled. Alexis opened her eyes to meet Kate's gaze. "Dad gives the best hugs."

Kate gave Alexis a sympathetic smile. "I know."

Castle's eyes flared with surprise and Kate met his look with rather exaggerated innocence and a soft smile she couldn't quite help. Castle did give good hugs; when she was wrapped in his arms, with his solid warmth surrounding her, cosseting her, she felt safe and, yes, loved in a way she hadn't felt since her mom had died.

Alexis went up to bed almost immediately afterwards with Castle going up with her to tuck her in. (Kate wasn't entirely sure whether tucking Alexis in was more for Castle's benefit than Alexis's but she supposed it hardly mattered.)

Kate sighed as she cleaned up the hot chocolate materials and then headed into their bedroom, pausing to deposit her gun in the safe on the way. She had just slipped off her dad's watch and her necklace, placing them both in the keepsake box Castle had given her, when Castle entered the room.

"Is Alexis asleep?"

He made a face. "I don't know how much she'll sleep but she's in bed at least." He paused. "She's clutching Monkey Bunkey."

Oh. Kate knew Alexis well enough by now to know that this was a sign of just how upset Alexis was since Monkey Bunkey usually lived on the chair in Alexis's room and was, in the way of many childhood toys, so much a part of the room that it was never really noticed anymore except when Alexis was upset for any reason. "Poor Alexis."

"I don't know what Lauren is thinking but she's going too far," Castle grumbled as he paced around the room. "I'm going to call Lauren's mom tomorrow," he announced. "She needs to know that her daughter is being so devious."

"If you really think that will help but I'm pretty sure that Lauren's mother will take Lauren's side. She's probably heard from Lauren her own side of the story and isn't likely to believe you," Kate cautioned.

"You might be right. Lauren's parents spoil her anyway," Castle commented glumly.

That was certainly true, Kate thought. She'd never met Lauren's parents although she had been introduced to Lauren briefly when Lauren had come by to the loft to see Alexis some time last year, but the fact that Lauren's parents had let Lauren throw such a huge party for her birthday and hired a live band for it too told her a lot.

"Fine, then. I can't really stop what Lauren is doing but at the very least, I can get those pictures of her and Ashley off her website. Alexis shouldn't have to deal with the public humiliation of everyone thinking Ashley cheated on her."

"Castle, if you're thinking of doing what I think you are, you shouldn't," Kate cautioned.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said with entirely spurious innocence.

Kate narrowed her eyes at him. He wasn't a very good liar, his own conscience getting in the way. "So you're not thinking of having Ryan ask some of his friends in Tech to possibly look into taking down those pictures on Lauren's website?"

He gave her a look of exaggerated horror. "You are telepathic. You have to be."

"I told you, I know you, Castle. Now stop evading. That is what you're thinking of doing, isn't it?"

"Why shouldn't I do what I can to save Alexis from the gossip at the very least? I'm her _father_ and it's my job to protect her."

There was enough helpless angst in Castle's voice to render his last sentence into a _cri de coeur_. And it occurred to Kate that she didn't know how anyone ever managed to be a parent, having to see one's child being hurt but not being able to do anything about it. As much as she loved Alexis, she wasn't Alexis's mom and it was still easier for her to be more detached about this sort of thing than it was for Castle. Castle still, in many ways, thought of Alexis as being his little girl, the one he had needed to feed and dress and tie her shoelaces for. Kate had the dual advantage of only having gotten to know Alexis when she was already a mature, capable teenager and of having been an independent teenager herself. Castle's first instinct was to step in and fix all of Alexis's problems; he was usually successful at letting Alexis live her own life up until Alexis was upset and then Castle's white-knight instinct, the part of him that loved to take care of the people he cared about, tended to surge to the fore.

She went over to him and took his hand, leading him to sit down on the bed. "I understand that you want to make things easier for Alexis but I don't think deleting those pictures will help Alexis and it might redound to make things worse for her."

"I don't see how. You saw how upset she is over having everyone think Ashley cheated on her."

Kate winced, her heart twisting and for a moment, she entirely shared Castle's wish to get those pictures deleted. Hell, when she pictured Alexis's distraught face, she was practically ready to threaten Lauren with her gun. But she needed to be the sensible one, she reminded herself sternly. For Alexis's sake, if nothing else. "I know but if you get the pictures deleted, do you think Lauren won't notice? Of course she'll notice and she'll assume that Alexis was behind it. We don't know why Lauren is doing what she is but going in and hacking into her website will likely make her even angrier at Alexis and she'll retaliate," she reasoned. Which was true, even aside from the fact that as a cop, she couldn't, in good conscience, encourage the abuse of police resources for a personal agenda.

Castle grimaced. "You're right. Damn it. So I'm just supposed to sit here and fume?"

"I'm sorry," was all she could say. "Maybe you could make her strawberry happy-face pancakes tomorrow morning?"

"Good idea, Beckett. I think I will."

"I don't think we have any strawberries but I can run out first thing in the morning and get some," she offered. "I was thinking of going to the gym tomorrow morning to get a workout in and then heading to the Hall of Records as soon as they open so I won't need to deal with a line. You can have a more leisurely breakfast with Alexis, and then I'll meet you in the precinct later."

"Oh, and we do have turkey bacon and Alexis loves that stuff so I'll fry up some bacon to have along with pancakes."

He sounded somewhat more cheerful now that they had a plan in place to make Alexis feel better and she felt something in her chest ease a little. They could figure this out, comforting Alexis and being there for her. Alexis would be okay.

* * *

The next day was another long one of running down leads to unravel the story Gordon Burns had been chasing that had gotten him killed, one that led them to a drug ring, run by none other than Cavallo.

She and Castle returned to the loft late in the evening to find the front room of the loft entirely deserted.

"I'm going to go up and check on Alexis," Castle told her, unnecessarily as he always looked in on Alexis on the evenings when they weren't home for dinner.

Left alone, Kate put her gun away in the safe and then went into the kitchen to pour some wine before settling on the couch and turning on the TV. She settled on an old rerun of _Temptation Lane_ but found her mind wandering instead, thinking about all she'd heard over the years about Cavallo, putting different incidents and scuttlebutt in a different light now that he was confirmed as an actual person and not a myth. And then she shifted to worrying over Alexis since Castle had now been upstairs talking to her for some minutes, which generally indicated that something was wrong. Castle's nightly check-in with Alexis rarely took more than a few minutes at most, just enough to reassure Castle as to Alexis's safety and general happiness. Kate hoped that Alexis's troubles with Lauren hadn't escalated further but she had a bad feeling that her hopes were going to be disappointed.

She finally heard Castle coming back downstairs some time later.

"Oh, wine," he blurted out the way a parched man stranded in a desert would have greeted the appearance of an oasis. "Beckett, you're a lifesaver."

He threw himself onto the couch beside her and accepted the glass of wine she handed him, immediately taking a drink.

"Is Alexis okay?"

He sighed. "Yes. No. I don't know. I think—I hope—she'll be fine."

For once, Kate didn't feel even a flicker of amusement at his indecisive answer. "What happened?"

"Lauren happened," he answered succinctly and rather grimly before taking another drink of wine. "Alexis ran into her in the bathroom and Lauren immediately accused her of ruining the party by crashing it—which takes a lot of nerve on Lauren's part since she's the one who started the whole mess anyway," Castle added in an irritated aside before continuing on, "Alexis called Lauren a backstabber—entirely justifiably in my view—and then Lauren accused Alexis of stabbing her in the back first and Alexis retorted that Lauren was crazy and their argument might have escalated into an actual fight but Paige and a couple other of Alexis's friends intervened and insisted it was time for them to go to class. She said it was awful at school today because everyone was talking about her and Ashley."

He took another drink from his wine glass and sighed. "I should have done something, should have gotten involved sooner before it got to this stage."

Castle was, Kate knew by now, rather good at blaming himself for things that really weren't his fault and that was doubly true when it came to anything involving Alexis. "Castle, there wasn't anything you could have done, short of something drastic like transferring Alexis to a different school entirely. Lauren would still have found a way to make Alexis's life miserable. You couldn't have prevented any of this from happening."

He grimaced. "I could have tried. Talked to Lauren's mom or one of Alexis's teachers or _something_. Alexis doesn't _do_ this sort of thing, get into serious arguments at school, and I haven't seen her so upset in ages. She was veering between anger and tears and it's just not like my level-headed daughter."

Kate sighed, finishing off her wine before putting her glass down on the coffee table, and taking his hand. "You can't protect Alexis from this sort of thing, Castle, from dealing with mean girls at school or betrayal by a friend. It's part of growing up, sad to say, and Alexis will have to learn to deal with it."

"I suppose," he grumbled. "I just hate seeing her so upset."

"I know, Castle. I hate knowing that Alexis is upset too. But I think Alexis is smart enough and strong enough to find a way to rise above all this."

He tightened his grip on her hand and then lifted her hand to his lips. "Thank goodness for you, Beckett. I still hate this but it's easier being able to talk about it with someone."

She smiled at him. "I'm your partner, Castle."

He returned the smile and leaned over to kiss her quickly. "Partners."

And at that moment, in spite of her concern over Alexis—even in an odd sense, because of her concern over Alexis, Kate felt happiness bubble up inside her. Because this was what it meant to be part of Castle's family, to share his worries over Alexis, and she loved it.

* * *

The next day, they finally, once and for all, put an end to Cavallo's reign of terror and shut down the heroin ring operating out of Terrific, Authentic Nick's. Kate half-expected that Narcotics would throw a party to celebrate.

Kate finished the paperwork to process Harley Romero's arrest for the murder of Gordon Burns, to say nothing of a slew of drug charges, and looked over at Castle, who was looking unusually somber for the successful end of a case.

"What is it, Castle?"

He blinked and looked over at her. "Just thinking about Gordon Burns and his daughter. He got so close to finally being able to get justice for his daughter."

"He did get justice for his daughter, Castle. And hopefully, he and his daughter are both at peace now because of it." She was only sorry that after so many years and with no real proof, it wouldn't be possible to charge Harley Romero with the death of Gordon Burns's daughter but at least Gordon Burns's friends, like his editor, would know that Gordon had got justice in the end, even if he had given his life for it.

"Yeah, you're right," Castle said with a little more cheer. "I hope he knows that, wherever he is."

"And both Harley Romero and Monica Wyatt will be going away for a long time," Kate said reassuringly. "This was a win for the good guys."

"And Gordon Burns proved his investigative journalisms chops in this last story of his. Getting onto the drug ring while looking into the pizza wars really was some great work."

"Worthy of Jameson Rook?" Kate quipped.

He laughed. "It puts Rook to shame."

She gave him a look of exaggerated shock. "I can't believe you, as Rook's creator, would say that."

"I believe in giving credit where it's due," he returned loftily.

She smirked at him. "How magnanimous of you."

"I'm a generous man." He paused. "Speaking of being generous, I wanted to ask, any chance you want to drive to Brooklyn tonight?"

She blinked. "Not in the slightest," she answered honestly. It had been another long day; it was already after 9 pm, and she was tired.

He pulled an exaggerated pout. "Aww, please, Beckett?"

"What am I, your chauffeur? And why do you want to go to Brooklyn?"

"For pizza, of course," Castle answered lightly and then explained, more seriously, when she narrowed her eyes at him, "It's this small pizza place down in Brooklyn, just off Kings Highway, sort of nondescript, but I discovered it by accident years ago and they make this fresh basil and sausage pizza that's Alexis's absolute favorite." He paused and then added, "I know it's late and a little far but I've been thinking about it the last couple days for obvious reasons and I think it'll be nice to cheer Alexis up. But don't worry about it, Beckett, I can go on my own."

"Don't be silly, Castle," she said as she stood up, shrugging into her jacket. "We can go together."

"Beckett! Really?"

She couldn't quite help but flush. He was looking at her as if she'd volunteered to do something worthy of canonization, looking at her as if she were a miracle. It wasn't that big a deal. "It's for Alexis, Castle. Of course I'll drive. Besides," she added lightly, "I don't want to subject you to the indignity of the N-Q-R line at this hour of the night."

He gave her one of his soft, real smiles. "Thank you, Beckett."

She tried to shrug off his thanks. "I'm doing it for Alexis. And besides, the pizza would probably cool off in the time it took you to get back to the loft if you took the subway." Which was true enough but even if it weren't, Kate found that she was more than willing to make the drive down to Brooklyn to pick up a pizza if it would cheer up Alexis after the week she'd had. Just as with Castle, it had bothered her not to be able to help Alexis in any way really. All she'd really done was make hot chocolate for Alexis but that seemed such a little thing compared to Alexis's hurt and sense of betrayal over Lauren's actions. She loved Alexis too and to make Alexis smile again, well, Kate would have driven to Ithaca to get a pizza. So really going to Brooklyn was nothing at all.

Castle called ahead to the pizza place so the pizza was ready when they arrived some twenty minutes later and Castle spent the drive quite deliberately recounting ridiculous stories of things that had happened on some of his book signing tours. He was, as usual, a raconteur par excellence and Kate was still laughing over his story of how he'd managed to escape the clutches of an obsessed fan when they arrived back at the loft.

Kate opened the door since Castle's hands were full carrying the pizza, that smelled delicious, Kate had to admit.

She smiled as she saw Alexis sitting on the couch. "Oh, good, you're still awake."

Alexis made a small face. "Couldn't sleep if I wanted to." Her eyes went to the pizza Castle was holding. "Is that from Stephano's?" she asked with the first hint of excitement in her voice.

"Mm hmm," Castle confirmed, sitting down beside her.

"You went all the way across the bridge for a pizza?" Alexis asked.

"Not for just anyone," Castle answered lightly. "Besides, it wasn't that bad since Beckett drove."

Alexis flashed Kate a grateful smile. "You did? Thanks, Kate. I hope Dad didn't pester you too much to make you agree."

Kate touched Alexis's shoulder as she settled on Alexis's other side. "It was no problem, Alexis. Any updates on the Lauren situation?"

Alexis made a small face. "I called a mediation session with our school counselor today. And you were right, Kate," Alexis added.

"Right about what?"

"Lauren was jealous of the time I was spending with Ashley. She thought I had ditched our friendship."

Oh right. Kate sighed a little, not entirely surprised. She really was so glad not to be in high school anymore, she reflected. In spite of the fact that she remembered her high school days fondly because of her mom, Kate also knew that she really wouldn't choose to go back to those days of volatile teenage emotions and petty jealousies.

"So what'd you do?" Castle asked.

"We hugged it out," Alexis answered cautiously.

"And now you're friends again?" Castle asked a little incredulously.

Alexis hesitated. "It's too soon to tell," she finally said. She sighed. "It's like you said, Kate. We're going to need to get over the hurt feelings to preserve the friendship but I just… I think about all she did because she was jealous and I can't help but wonder if I can really trust her again."

Kate sighed and patted Alexis's knee. "At least you know now why Lauren was acting the way she was. And after a while, when your memory of how hurt you were fades a little, it'll probably become easier to remember all the reasons you were Lauren's friend in the first place."

Castle put his arm around Alexis. "Hurts like these take time to heal."

"Time. And pizza," Alexis added with a flash of her usual humor.

Kate smiled. "That could go in an ad for pizza," she suggested as she opened the pizza box. "Oh, this does look good."

"It is good," Alexis told her with something approaching her usual brightness. "I think Stephano's makes the best pizza."

They each picked up a slice of pizza and Castle bumped his slice against Alexis's in an imitation of a toast. "Cheers."

Alexis smiled. "Cheers."

Kate laughed a little as she touched her slice to Alexis's and Castle's. "Cheers." Ridiculous to be toasting with pizza but it was such a Castle-like thing to do. As she took a first bite of her pizza—which was absolutely delicious—her eyes met Castle's smiling gaze and then they both looked at Alexis, who looked almost her usual self again, and Kate thought that there was absolutely nowhere else in the world she would rather be, no one else in the world she would rather be with. All she wanted was to be here, at home with her family.

 _To be continued…_

A/N 2: I know this chapter is somewhat light on Caskett (sorry!) but if it's any comfort, the next couple chapters will be entirely Caskett-focused.

As always, thank you for reading and I'd love to know what everyone thinks.


	27. Chapter 26: Dead Pool

Author's Note: This chapter takes place during "Dead Pool," which is another ep from S3 that I really liked because it had two things I love: Beckett saying "Always" to Castle and the mystery writer poker group, which is always fun. Castle being jealous, though, is one of those things that sort of changed complexion when considered in light of Castle and Beckett being together so this chapter is less humorous than the original episode. I will leave it to you all to judge how well it worked out.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 26_

Castle wasn't jealous.

Really. He wasn't jealous.

He knew there was nothing to be jealous about. He had more trust in Beckett than that. He did. Beckett had been willing to move in to the loft, was living with him, and he knew without being told that she'd never lived with Sorenson or any other previous boyfriend. She loved him. She'd said so and Kate Beckett wouldn't lie about that and even aside from that, he _knew_ she loved him. It was in the way she touched him, the way she slept curled up next to him, the way she talked to him these days.

He wasn't jealous.

Except, yes, he kind of was. He didn't particularly like himself for it but he couldn't quite seem to help it.

He tried—and failed—not to wonder what Beckett and Conrad were talking about. Tried—and failed—not to picture the two of them talking and smiling and laughing together.

Conrad was an annoyingly good-looking guy, it occurred to Castle. Young, too, since he was 28. Which, as an insidious little voice whispered at him, was closer to Beckett's age than he himself was.

40\. Castle felt abruptly and unpleasantly ancient, the 9 years between him and Beckett suddenly seeming like a gaping chasm of distance.

Unbidden, the memory of Beckett eyeing Rob Tredwyck as he shed his robe and walked away from them returned to him. "Rocket" Rob Tredwyck with his youthful, lithe, swimmer's body. Castle looked down at his stomach as if to assure himself it was still flat; he put more effort into working out so he could keep up with Beckett but it was harder than it used to be and he knew there was some softening in his belly, although it was thankfully not visible when he was clothed.

He was being ridiculous! He jerked his head up and directed a scowl at his unoffending bookshelves as if they, too, were laughing at him for his own bout of insecurity.

But Beckett was gorgeous. She would make Adonis feel insecure. Ugh.

He remembered the clear admiration in Conrad's face when he'd met Beckett, the way he'd complimented her. Piercing intelligence and self-assured beauty! Castle huffed in irritation. Impudent puppy, what did he think he was doing commenting on Beckett's looks like that?

And Beckett had blushed and seemed a little thrown off-balance by the words, flustered even.

Damn it. He knew he was being silly but it just… _bothered_ him, knowing that Beckett was talking to Conrad and telling him more about the life of a cop. Because Castle, of all people, knew what it was like to spend time with Beckett, knew how easy it was to be enthralled by her looks and her intelligence and her wit and her awesome competence.

Conrad had already seemed well on his way to having a crush on Beckett just from meeting her, especially after reading about her as Nikki Heat. But then to actually spend time with Beckett, who was, as Castle knew, so much more than Nikki… What man would not fall for Beckett after spending an evening talking to her?

He had tried to make a joke out of it when telling his mother and Alexis why Beckett wasn't home yet, making a quip about muse thievery being a felony in fairy-tale land, but now that his mother and Alexis had gone upstairs, he didn't have to pretend. He was restless and couldn't seem to settle down and concentrate on anything. He'd tried to write but had only managed to write in disjointed fashion about Rook looking on in disgruntled fashion as Nikki bonded and laughed with another cop she had been in the Academy with. It wasn't something that would make it into a book and for once, writing it out didn't seem to help.

He had to force himself not to leap up out of his chair when he heard the front door of the loft open and greeted Beckett with as much casualness as he could muster when she entered his office to put away her gun. "Hey, Beckett, you're back."

(Not that he was jealous. He wasn't. How could he be, when Beckett was coming home to _him_?)

She was smiling as she entered and only turned her smile on him. "Hey, Castle. Doing some writing?"

"Trying to. How did it go with Conrad?"

"It was fun. We talked about procedure."

He wrinkled his nose. Procedure—the i's to dot and t's to cross in investigating a case, the paperwork it entailed—was his least-favorite part of working with Beckett. "And that was fun?"

She laughed lightly. "Don't look like that, Castle. Not everyone finds procedure that boring. Alex seemed to find it interesting enough. He said he was going to use it all for his next book. And anyway, Alex is a fun guy to talk to."

He fought back a scowl. She called him Alex? He knew he was being ridiculous—what else was she supposed to call Alex Conrad but his name?—but it still niggled at him. She rarely used _his_ first name. She used his first name when she was feeling particularly tender.

Damn it. That thought had not been as reassuring as he'd hoped.

He was being irrational and stupid.

Beckett was still talking. "He said that next time he wants to talk about cases."

"Next time?"

"You know that it's not really possible to learn all there is to know about being a cop in one evening. I seem to remember that a certain author has been shadowing me for more than two years now," she teased.

He forced a small smile. "I just didn't realize you two would have already scheduled something. When are you going to meet?"

"Tomorrow after work."

Two nights in a row? "Tomorrow? I thought you and Lanie and Jenny were meeting up."

Beckett shrugged. "Yeah, I figure I'll meet with Alex first and just be a little late to meet up with Lanie and Jenny. We're not meeting up until 8 anyway because Lanie wasn't sure she'd be able to leave work much before then."

At least, he didn't need to fake a smile at the idea of Beckett meeting up with Lanie and Jenny. "Sounds like fun. Where're you guys meeting, anyway?"

She shot him a smirk. "At the Old Haunt, of course. Where else can we get free drinks?"

He heaved a theatrical, beleaguered sigh. "I'll call ahead to arrange it. Please try not to drink the place dry. I'm not sure the Old Haunt's budget has recovered from the last time we were there with the boys."

She snickered at the memory, a lot of which, he had no doubt, revolved around practically having to pour Ryan into a cab at the end of the night, while even Espo had been decidedly unsteady on his feet. But she only said, rather briskly, "I should get to know Jenny better since she is going to be marrying Ryan and all."

"Yeah. It's a little weird to think of Ryan marrying someone we don't know that well since we spend basically all day with Ryan," he agreed, relaxing. It occurred to him that he loved the word 'we.'

"Lanie and I already agreed that we're going to start inviting Jenny to our girls nights out from now on."

"Welcoming her in to the precinct family. I'm sure Ryan appreciates it."

"Yeah. In a way, it's part of the brotherhood of cops. Alex said that he thinks that might be one of the nicest aspects about being a cop."

And she was back to talking about Alex. Castle sternly schooled his expression into blandness. "You talked about the brotherhood of cops with Alex?"

"Oh, it came up in talking about the different precincts and how we coordinate to keep from intruding on another precinct's jurisdiction, sharing information if we see in the system that another precinct has been looking into a person of interest on a case. That sort of thing."

"Like when Greta Morgan was picked up by the 27th and they brought her over to the 12th because they knew we were looking for her during the Stacey Collins case," he recalled.

She gave him a smile of shared memories. "Exactly."

He returned the smile. See? He knew he was being ridiculous. He and Beckett shared so much history already. And no upstart little writer who'd only met Beckett that day could possibly come between them.

Beckett went on. "It's funny you mentioned that one, Castle. I used that example in talking to Alex tonight too."

Drat it all, was Beckett not capable of going more than a few sentences without talking about Alex bloody Conrad?

"He's clever. I thought so after reading his book but after talking to him, I know it for sure."

Why oh why had he thought it would be a good idea for Beckett to read Alex Conrad's book? Of course, at the time, he reminded himself, he hadn't imagined that Beckett would ever meet Alex Conrad except maybe in passing. He'd only been thinking that he knew Beckett was a reader and he'd thought that since he liked Conrad's book, in spite of its little weaknesses, she would too and anyway, he valued her opinion. He made a mental note never to recommend another mystery writer to Beckett again; they were his competitors after all, he told himself. Not that he had any other reason.

"Oh, he's got brains," Castle agreed and added mentally that Conrad knew he was clever too. The cocky young bastard, walking into the precinct and immediately suggesting that they'd been looking at the case wrong the entire time and maybe the murder didn't have anything to do with steroids after all. As if steroids in the athletic world wasn't a big enough secret to make a rather obvious motive for murder.

And Beckett had listened to him!

She didn't listen to Castle's theories that readily. (He ignored the little voice in his head that reminded him that that was probably because his theories usually involved a lot more speculation and had less basis in the evidence they had.)

"His book was good too, especially for a first novel. The plot was a little thin and the characterization not as well-developed as it could have been but the dialogue was pretty much spot on, and the story flowed well." She shot him a teasing look. "It was better than some of your earlier efforts."

This time, he didn't bother trying to hide his scowl. "Hey!"

She smirked. "Oh come on, Castle, you have to admit it's true. His book was better than _A Skull in Springtime,_ for one."

"It was so not," he protested, neatly forgetting the fact that she had really only echoed his own assessment of Conrad's book, minus the direct comparison to _A Skull in Springtime_. He also ignored the fact that when he thought about it, he sort of could see her point about the two books in comparison. He'd always thought that was one of his weakest books.

She only laughed at him. "Protest all you like but it won't change the facts."

He pretended to pout and she grinned at him and he felt the jagged edges of his burgeoning jealousy being smoothed away, the warmth of her smile, the way her eyes danced as she looked at him, soothing him. He never could stay annoyed or bad-tempered when Beckett was smiling at him like that.

* * *

Unfortunately, his good humor took a turn for the worse when they arrived at the precinct the next morning to see a large basket of muffins sitting in his chair by Beckett's desk.

"Say, Beckett, do you have a secret admirer who's a baker?" he quipped.

Beckett paused to look at the card and smiled. "They're not from a secret admirer. They're from Alex."

Alex. Again, the fact that Beckett used Conrad's first name seemed to grate on him. Castle dropped the muffin he'd picked up as if it had burned him. (Muffins! At least, it wasn't coffee. Castle knew it was irrational but he had a niggling feeling that if Beckett ever accepted coffee from another man, he would really react as if she were being unfaithful.) He sensed Beckett's odd look at him but ignored it in favor of reading the card.

And then thought his jaw might crack from the effort it took to keep from scowling.

 _Thanks for last night?!_

Of course he knew what it meant but the other way of interpreting that—the one that would leap out at anyone who didn't know—promptly made him lose whatever equanimity he'd managed to regain when it came to Conrad.

Entirely against his will, he suddenly thought of Esposito last year after Scott Dunn had left that body on Beckett's old apartment's doorstep. _Pancakes are an edible way of saying thank you so much for last night._

Really. And Conrad called himself a writer. He should know better than to write such an innuendo-laden message for something entirely innocent.

Unless he'd intended the innuendo.

In which case, Castle might need to kill him.

Castle tried not to read anything in the fact that Alex Conrad's muffins were in his own chair, preventing him from taking his usual spot. (Damn his writer's brain and its tendency to read symbolism into everything.)

He wanted to move the muffins to the floor but that would only make them a tripping hazard for someone—possibly Beckett—to trip over so instead he cleared a spot on the corner of Beckett's desk and moved them there so he could take his usual seat. _His_ chair. Just like Beckett was _his_ partner.

The case distracted him for a while as they trekked down to Bensonhurst but then his mood veered abruptly southward as Beckett laughed, not at what he had said, but at a text message from Conrad scheduling their meeting again that night. Two nights in a row.

Maybe he was overreacting (just a little) but damn it, _he_ was supposed to be the one who made her smile and laugh! He sometimes felt as if he spent the better part of his life angling to make Beckett laugh and when he succeeded, it never failed to make him feel like a king.

She smiled and laughed more often now, he knew that. He remembered the straight-laced, rather prickly Detective he had first met, the one who was all about work and kept people at a distance either by her prickliness or by her snarky sarcastic wit. She was… softer now, no less driven at work (that was ingrained), but her smiles and her laughter came easier now. She didn't feel the same automatic need to keep people at a distance and if Kate Beckett with all her walls in place had been beautiful, Kate Beckett when the walls had come down was downright breathtaking, mesmerizing.

Small wonder, then, if Alex Conrad had been clearly and immediately mesmerized.

And Beckett was letting him be mesmerized.

She didn't even need to try to be utterly bewitching. He, of all people, knew that.

It just… bothered him that she wasn't _not_ trying to bewitch Conrad either. She knew how after all; she'd made her prickly demeanor into an art form when she'd been trying to push him away after he'd first looked into her mom's case.

He irrationally, stupidly missed the old prickly Beckett.

Maybe that was what he feared the most. That Beckett might use him to help her take down her walls, become more confident in herself and her ability to have a real relationship, and then she would find someone better. She would move on and leave him, just like every other woman he'd ever loved had.

In some corner of his mind, Castle was aware he was being paranoid but he couldn't quite seem to help it, all his latent insecurities, his fear from being so vulnerable where she was concerned, whispering at him, insidiously.

* * *

Kate was smiling to herself as she arrived back at the loft.

Castle had told her that she was welcome to stay and join his mystery writer poker group, as indeed she had last year when the poker group had met. It had been fun, the writers giving Castle a bit of a hard time about life imitating art and telling her that now they saw her in person, they entirely understood why Castle had been so persistent in shadowing her. She'd enjoyed herself, even if she'd had to occasionally tamp down the flutter of giddiness as she looked around the poker table and realized that she was actually playing cards with Patterson and Cannell and Connelly, these authors whose books she'd been reading for years.

But she'd decided not to join the men. She wanted Castle to have some space, time to just enjoy himself with his friends that he didn't manage to see very often, only a couple times a year, at most, when all their schedules coincided. And she'd figured it would be good for her to have a night out on her own too and had arranged to meet up with Lanie and Jenny.

Kate had been a little uncertain of herself, although she would never have admitted it, since Kate didn't have much in common with most stereotypically feminine women. She carried a gun every day and spent all her life surrounded by men and by sheer virtue of her job, hadn't had a manicure in years or any of that sort of thing. She and Lanie had work in common but Jenny worked in interior design and was, from what Kate knew of her, the quintessential sweet little woman. Jenny had probably never even seen a dead body before and had almost certainly never seen a gunshot wound or a murder victim in her entire life. She was, in other words, about as different from Kate as it was possible to be.

But Kate had realized as they talked that Jenny had her own strength that rather belied her appearance, rather like Ryan himself, she supposed. She still remembered meeting Ryan for the first time and taking one look at him and being sure that he wouldn't last a week of being partnered up with Esposito or keeping up with her. Ryan had proven her wrong and so had Jenny really.

Kate had enjoyed herself much more than she'd been expecting. It had been a new experience, in one sense, to be part of a group of women who were all in happy, settled relationships. She, Lanie, and Jenny had had some fun griping over some of the annoying habits each of their respective significant others had and sharing some general funny stories from life with their respective men. (Kate was going to find it hard to look at Ryan or Espo the same way again.) Yes, she'd had fun.

Ryan and Jenny had finally set a date for their wedding so there'd been some talk about wedding planning. Lanie had teased Kate about being next and Kate had felt herself blushing but hadn't been able to deny it. (Oh god.)

Kate lifted a hand in greeting at the doorman on duty.

"Late evening for you, Detective," Peter greeted her.

"It is a bit. I was out with some friends," she answered him. "Have a good night."

"You too, Detective."

She pushed the button for the elevator and then smiled as the elevator doors slid open and she found herself face to face with Lehane and Connelly and Alex Conrad.

"Detective, we missed you tonight," Lehane greeted her as they all stepped off the elevator.

"We thought Ricky must have decided to hide you away from us," Connelly joined in lightly.

"No, I had plans to meet up with some friends," Kate smiled. "How was the game?"

"Oh, Ricky won, as usual," Connelly pretended to grumble.

"We needed you around to make sure he doesn't win all the time," Lehane chimed in.

Kate laughed. "Maybe next time. I was busy tonight."

"Well, I'm glad we still got to see you, Detective," Connelly said.

"Same here. Have a good night."

"You too. Take care of yourself, Detective," Lehane responded before turning to Alex Conrad, who had rather surprisingly stayed silent during this entire exchange. "Good to meet you, kid. I'll keep an eye out for your next book."

"Thank you," Alex murmured.

The two older writers left and Kate turned to Alex. "Did you have fun tonight? It must have been cool to meet these authors whose work you've been reading for years."

He made a small face. "Oh, I suppose."

It suddenly occurred to Kate that he wasn't meeting her eyes and looked distinctly ill at ease, 180 degrees removed from the easygoing, personable young guy she'd gotten to know the past couple days. What on earth… "Everything okay?"

He started a little and ran a hand through his hair. "I survived the evening so I guess I'm fine."

Survived? "What happened?"

He gave an awkward little laugh. "Oh, just a little hazing, making the point that I might have gotten one book published but one book doesn't make me anywhere near the level of a Lehane or Connelly or Mr. Castle. I think the main reason Mr. Castle invited me was to make a point: stay away from his muse."

And his girlfriend, Kate thought irritably, but didn't say. "Don't worry about Castle, Alex."

For the first time, he met her eyes. "That's nice of you, Detective, but I don't want to be on Mr. Castle's bad side. I can find other people to answer my questions."

He was calling her 'Detective' again? Castle really must have made his point clear. "If you're sure." She wasn't entirely surprised. Alex might not say it aloud but in a real sense, Castle did have power over Alex Conrad. A word from Castle and Alex Conrad would probably be dropped by Black Pawn and even if he weren't, Alex Conrad would certainly like for Castle to continue to give positive reviews for his future books. She didn't believe Castle would stoop to sabotaging Conrad's career (hazing was one thing but Castle wasn't vindictive) but Alex probably didn't want to take the risk.

He nodded quickly. "I am, thanks, Detective. Good night."

"Good night."

He hurried away and Kate stepped into the elevator, annoyance having replaced her good mood from earlier.

Really, Castle? Hazing?

He'd been acting a little weirdly since he'd introduced her to Alex Conrad. Kate had wondered but Castle did, occasionally, have some odd moods, frustration when he was having trouble with a certain scene spilling over into his real life sometimes and other times when for whatever reason, he wasn't his usual funny self. She'd considered and dismissed the idea of jealousy because what reason could Castle have to be jealous? She was living with him and she was being nice to Alex Conrad because Castle had asked her to be.

Now, he had put Alex through a little hazing out of some petty jealousy? A petty jealousy that he had made an effort to hide from her, which didn't sit well with Kate either. Of all the passive-aggressive things to do.

She pushed open the door to the loft, spotting Castle in the kitchen rinsing the glasses the men must have used to drink out of.

"Castle."

He looked over at her, looking a little ill at ease at her tone, although he attempted to smile. "Oh, hi, Beckett. You're home."

Home. The implications of the word struck her anew and she felt another flicker of irritation at Castle for his pettiness.

"So I just ran into Lehane, Connelly, and Alex Conrad in the lobby," she told him.

"I figured you might have since they just left," he answered with forced casualness.

She stopped on the other side of the kitchen island, raising her eyebrows at him. "Alex didn't seem like he'd had a good time tonight. Sounds like you guys were pretty hard on him."

Castle scoffed a little and attempted a look of confusion that made all of Kate's suspicions rear. He was guilty of something. She could see it in his expression. "Hard on him? No! It was just a little… friendly hazing."

Friendly. Ha. "To hear him describe it, it sounds like someone was trying to teach him a lesson."

He tried to look as if he had no idea what she was talking about. "What? Why would I want to do that?"

"Castle, tell me you're not actually jealous of Alex Conrad."

Castle spluttered a little. "No, I'm not—that's ridic—why would I be—"

She narrowed her eyes at him and he gave up on his stuttering attempt at a denial, his face settling into petulant lines.

"I just… I maybe, kind of, didn't like it that you were spending time with another writer, another man, and smiling at him and laughing at things he said, talking to him about work the way you talk to me," he mumbled the last few words, not meeting her eyes.

"Are you kidding me, Castle? You were the one that introduced me to Alex in the first place."

"I know! I just… didn't know he would immediately start theorizing about our case or wanting you to be his muse too," he trailed off rather shamefacedly.

"He's writing a mystery and wanted to do research into police work. You of all people should understand that."

Castle snorted. "It didn't mean he needed to flirt with you."

Oh, for crying out loud. What _was_ it with men? "He was not flirting."

"'Piercing intelligence and self-assured beauty,'" he quoted pointedly. "And you blushed when he said it."

"What is that supposed to mean? I don't control my blushes, Castle. Don't be ridiculous."

"And you—" he broke off abruptly.

"Oh, no, Castle, you don't get to start a sentence like that and not finish it. What else did I do that made you so jealous?"

He hesitated, focusing his eyes anywhere but at her, and then finally finished in a rush, "You let him call you Kate."

The sheer injustice of this made Kate's temper flare. What the hell? "He asked because calling me 'Detective Beckett' all the time was a mouthful and I agreed because it is, after all, my name. What do you think he should call me—Jane Doe?" she asked with biting sarcasm.

He had the grace to wince at that.

Kate attempted to bring her temper back in line. "Come on, Castle, be reasonable," she said with forced calm, "I'm with you. I'm coming home to you. And you're getting jealous because I smiled at another guy and he paid me a couple compliments? I thought you trusted me."

"I trusted Meredith too."

She drew back as if he'd slapped her and for a moment, just gaped at him. He hadn't just—he _had_ —he really… Any chance that she would be able to rein her temper in died abruptly. "You aren't seriously comparing me to Meredith! You honestly think I would— _You're_ the one who's been divorced twice and is famous for showing up on Page Six with a different woman on your arm every other month! Women flirt with you all the time and do I throw a jealous fit? No. Because I trust you. I guess it's just too bad that you don't trust me."

She turned away, suddenly needing to move, to get out. She always needed to pace when she got upset and right now, she really didn't want to stay in the same room with him. "I'm going out. I can't be here right now," she bit out.

"Beckett!"

She heard him call her but she ignored him as she rushed out of the loft, taking the stairs rather than the elevator out of sheer impatience.

Kate stalked off down the street, heading in the direction of her apartment for lack of a better destination since wandering aimlessly wasn't her style. She was thankful for the mild chill of the early April night against her heated cheeks, cooling her temper somewhat.

She couldn't believe he had— He had all but accused her of cheating on him! To compare the couple smiles she'd given Alex Conrad and the couple hours she'd spent just answering his questions on police work to Meredith, who had brought another man into the bed she shared with Castle! She knew Castle had an overactive imagination but really, he'd gone way overboard.

Did he honestly think that she would so easily betray him, throw out everything they had together, after a few paltry compliments?

Walking—well, pounding the pavement with her steps—as usual cleared her mind a little and she felt her temper cool, some rationality reasserting itself.

She didn't think that he really believed she had or even would cheat on him with Alex Conrad. He might have an overactive imagination but he wasn't stupid (his recent behavior notwithstanding). He was just jealous. Over basically nothing but she could, if she forced herself to think about it from his point of view, see why it would bother him for another man to use her as a muse or a source of information or whatever. (Men. Territorial, possessive idiots, the lot of them. She huffed again.)

So she had smiled at Alex Conrad, even laughed when he said something funny. And maybe she had been a little flattered with his attentiveness to what she said, his apparent fascination with her and her work. It was hard not to be flattered by that sort of attention from a good-looking guy.

Was Castle really that possessive that she couldn't even smile at another man?

Unbidden, she remembered what he'd said, the look in his eyes, as he'd told her, _You were laughing and your eyes were so bright and sparkling with green and I looked at you and I just knew that I wanted to see you smile like that every day for the rest of my life._

The recollection abruptly took all the wind out of her sails.

And she remembered, too, the way she felt when she saw Castle smile at other women, the charming smile he gave the fans who approached him and, yes, flirted with him. She might not like it but she knew that charm and a hint of flirtation was part of his public persona, the one he adopted for his fans and she'd learned to accept it because she understood that with him, he used charm as a shield rather as she had developed her own prickly, no-nonsense shell.

And then the memory of the way she'd felt when Natalie Rhodes had thrown herself at him returned to her too.

Kate became aware that she was passing by a small park with a playground area for the benefit of the elementary school next door and veered off the pavement, heading to the swing set and settling on one of the swings.

Now that her anger had faded, she belatedly realized what she'd said to him, what she'd cast up at him. She winced. Oh god. To have thrown his divorces and his reputation in his face. She'd once promised herself that she would never use his divorces against him as a weapon, knowing how much they still bothered him. She'd promised—and then she'd lost her temper. And the problem with knowing him as well as she did was that she knew exactly how to get to him, knew where all the chinks in his armor were.

He knew where all the chinks in her armor were too but that thought wasn't exactly a comforting one.

She sighed. Oh _damn_.

She sensed his approach before she heard him.

"Beckett, I almost missed seeing you here." He sounded cautious and out of breath, as if he'd been running around looking for her, which he very likely had.

He sat down in the swing next to hers.

She didn't look up at him immediately but she sensed his gaze on her for a long moment.

"I'm sorry," they both blurted out in messy unison.

She met his eyes and they exchanged faint, rueful smiles and Kate felt the tightness in her chest begin to ease.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, speaking first. "I didn't mean that, not the way it sounded. I know you would never… do what Meredith did. I was petty and stupid; I was an ass." He paused and then grimaced. "I just… it brought back some memories, to have you spending time with another man…"

"Castle, Alex wasn't interested in me; he only wanted to know more about police work."

"You only say that because you've never met you yet."

She blinked and couldn't help huffing a soft laugh at this. Castle occasionally spoke in cryptic epigrams but even so, this was more incoherent than his usual standards. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I know what it's like to meet you, Kate, and be totally bowled over by everything about you—your beauty, your passion and drive, your brilliant mind, your sense of humor. You're… incredible, Kate, and I can't imagine how any man could spend time with you and not fall in love with you."

She felt herself blush, her heart fluttering. Oh, this man and his words… "Castle, that's sweet but I really think you're biased. Esposito and Ryan are definitely not in love with me and they spend more time with me than anyone else except you."

"They don't count; they're practically your family."

"Fine, Perlmutter. He's not family and he's spent quite a bit of time with me over the years."

"Perlmutter doesn't count either because he's not human."

She laughed softly and reached out to take his hand. "Anyway, it wouldn't matter even if every man who met me fell for me because _I_ wouldn't be interested. Not in Alex Conrad, not in anyone else. You know that, right?"

"I trust you," he responded with sudden intensity. "I _do_. I trust you with my life, with my heart. I know I can trust you, Kate. But sometimes, I don't trust myself." He broke off and ran a hand down his face before he went on, moodily scuffing the toe of his shoe into the sand. "What I meant when I said… what I did… it's just… I was blindsided when I… walked in on Meredith." He gave an unamused little laugh. "They say the spouse is always the last one to know and that was me. There were signs, when I look back on it, but I ignored them and always told myself that I trusted Meredith and she was coming home to me and Alexis every night and she still claimed to love me and was still… interested in me."

Kate's stomach twisted, almost in spite of herself, because she understood what Castle meant by 'interested.' It was entirely irrational and ridiculous to react the way she was to Castle's rather oblique reference to sleeping with Meredith since they had been married at the time—but she still didn't like it. And oh god, it somehow hadn't occurred to her to realize the full depths of Meredith's betrayal, that she had still been coming home to Castle every night, had still been telling Castle she loved him…

"I was such a willfully blind fool and I swore that would never happen again and… I'm not proud of it but my doubts got the better of me. And I wonder sometimes because you're… you and you can do better than me. You can find someone better, someone who doesn't have two failed marriages behind him, who won't get your name in the papers, someone who's not a petty, immature jackass."

She hated herself. She hated Meredith too but mostly it was herself. How _could_ she have cast his divorces against him? She tended to think of herself as being the insecure one in their relationship, the one who was quicker to doubt. Castle was usually so cocky, making it… easy, too easy really, to forget that he had his own deep-seated vulnerabilities and insecurities when it came to relationships. They really were equals, in this as in so many other things. She tightened her grip on his hand and leaned over, making her swing angle closer to him. "Castle, stop it and listen to me. You are an amazing man and there could never be anyone better for me than you. There's never going to be anyone else for me. I told you once that I was a one-and-done type of girl, remember?"

"I remember," he answered, his voice barely above a breath, his thumb beginning to trace light circles on the back of her hand in a gentle caress.

She met his eyes in the darkness and had to swallow back the sudden lump of emotion in her throat, her heart thrashing around in her chest. She wasn't good at this sort of openness, wasn't good at expressing her deepest emotions like this. But he needed to know. "You're my one, Castle," she whispered. "You—our relationship—this is it for me."

He let out a shaky breath. "This is it for me too."

She wasn't sure which of them leaned in first—not that it mattered—so their lips met in a soft kiss that was apology and reconciliation in one.

"And Castle, you don't need to worry about me spending any more time with Alex Conrad. From now on, I'm a one-writer girl."

"Kate, you don't need to—I thought we agreed I was being petty."

She gave him a small smile. "You were being petty but I understand. I wouldn't like it if you started shadowing another woman and basing a character on her."

"I do feel kind of bad, though. Alex is my mentee after all and he didn't do anything wrong."

"Well, I'm hardly the only cop in the City. Maybe Esposito or Ryan will agree to answer his questions."

"A guy as a muse? Seems a little weird."

She laughed a little. "Well, I wouldn't start calling Espo or Ryan muses but they can certainly tell Alex about what it's like to be a cop. Anyway, it might even work out better because Alex's Logan Hawke is a guy so he doesn't need the perspective of what it's like to be a female cop."

"Thank you, Kate."

She smiled. "Always." She leaned in to kiss him again, simply because she could.

"I'm sorry for what I said too," she told him quietly.

"Kate, it's okay…" he sighed.

"No, Castle, it's not. I shouldn't have thrown your past in your face like that."

"But it bothers you, doesn't it, that I've been married before?" he asked, a little tentatively.

She sucked in a small breath. They hadn't really talked about this before and she'd tried so hard to keep him from ever guessing that she found herself wishing sometimes that she could be his one and done too, that he hadn't made those vows to love and cherish to two other women before. She hated that it bothered her because it wasn't like she hadn't always known and she didn't blame him for his divorces. She just… didn't like it. "It's stupid, Castle," she finally answered rather indirectly. "Don't worry about it."

"I'll worry more if we can't talk about it."

He was right, of course. As hard as all this was, they did need to talk about these things. Even the tiniest splinter that started out as a minor irritation could fester and become more serious. Her own reluctance to talk about it, partly because she still tended to reticence when it came to her own emotions and partly because she knew she was being irrational and petty in her own way to be bothered by it, had to give way.

"It's just… it's silly, Castle. It _is._ I just was never with someone who's been married before," she explained lamely. "Like I said, I'm a one-and-done type of girl and I guess I sort of assumed…" She'd always rather assumed that the person she married would be in the same boat, so to speak. She didn't finish the sentence aloud, didn't want to finish the sentence. Putting it into words made it sound even more foolish than it already did in her thoughts.

He sighed. "I think… I understand. Meredith and Gina were mistakes and I wish I'd been smarter about things, though I could never regret having Alexis. I'm not… proud of my past but I can't change it either. I just tell myself that every mistake I've made, every terrible or wonderful thing that's ever happened to me, has led me to where I am now—with you—and that makes it worth it."

Kate kept her eyes on her hands, suddenly not able to meet his eyes. She hated herself all over again for being so petty and small-minded and unjust, for dwelling on his past so much. And he thought that being with her made up for everything… "I'm sorry, Castle. I'm being stupid and unfair. I know I am. We both have baggage from our past and if you can accept mine, then I can accept yours."

"It's a deal," he told her gently and lifted his hand to cup her cheek, turning her head so she had to meet his eyes.

She was almost afraid to look at him, terrified that she would see disappointment in his expression. Because it did terrify her sometimes. That she would disappoint this man who thought she was extraordinary and had written about it for the entire world to see. And as much as she loved him for it, as much as his unquestioning faith in her never failed to lift her heart, part of her couldn't help but wonder sometimes if he really saw _her_ or if he'd put her up on a pedestal, created this perfect vision of her in his head much as he had created Nikki Heat.

But no, there was no disappointment. There was only understanding and so much love on his face it made her throat tight with emotion.

"We okay, Kate?"

She managed a smile for him. "Better than okay, Rick."

He returned her smile and leaned over to kiss her again before he stood up and held his hand out to her. "Home, Kate?"

She slipped her hand into his. "Yes, let's go home."

They walked in silence for a little while, Kate staying closely tucked in against his side so their arms stayed flush with each other.

He was the first one to break the silence, as usual. "How was your evening with Lanie and Jenny?"

"We had a good time. Jenny's a sweetheart but she also has a great sense of humor. She and Ryan are a lot alike."

"Well, they are getting married so I suppose that's not surprising."

She smiled. "Speaking of which, they finally set a date for their wedding."

He turned to look at her. "They did? When is it?"

"It's going to be the second Saturday in January, the 14th."

"They're getting married in the middle of January?" he asked incredulously. "Because nothing says happily-ever-after like making your bridesmaids get frostbite from standing outside in formal dresses in the middle of winter," he commented wryly.

She nudged his arm. "Don't be such a downer, Castle. Of course the ceremony and reception will all be indoors. No one's going to freeze."

"Yeah, but January? That's the worst month of the year."

It was certainly the hardest month of the year for her but Kate pushed that thought aside. And she knew that it wasn't what Castle meant, not now. He was only speaking in terms of the weather. "Jenny didn't say but on thinking about it, it does make sense for them."

"Enlighten me."

"It's obviously the off-season for weddings so it'll be a lot easier and a lot cheaper for them to find a venue for the reception. And January is the easiest time for Ryan to take a week or so off for the honeymoon because no one else will be taking any vacation right after the holidays so there won't be any concern about the precinct being short-staffed," she explained. Lucky that she and Castle wouldn't have to worry about the cost of a wedding venue or a honeymoon. The thought darted into Kate's head and she felt herself blush, thankful for the darkness that hid it. Oh god, she was really thinking like this, thinking ahead to their _wedding_?

"Okay, well, when you put it like that, it does make sense."

"Oh, ye of little faith," she teased. "Ryan and Jenny aren't crazy. Did you really think they'd pick a wedding date at random?"

"No, of course not. It just surprised me, that's all. January doesn't exactly leap to mind as a good month for a wedding."

"True," she conceded. "But they've set the date. Jenny said they're still trying to decide who they're going to invite but they're hoping to send out the invitations around Memorial Day."

"Think we'll be invited?" Castle joked.

She laughed. "I don't know, Castle. Maybe it's time to lend Ryan your Ferrari again. Remind him why he likes you."

He gave her a look of exaggerated dismay. "Why, Beckett, are you advocating bribery? I'm shocked, absolutely shocked."

She smirked. "What can I say, Castle? You're a bad influence."

He laughed, tightening his grip on her hand. "I like influencing you."

She smiled at him, moving in so her cheek brushed his shoulder. "I like having you influence me," she told him quietly.

He leaned over and kissed her forehead quickly. "If you're done being sentimental, Detective," he said, his voice laced with affection and teasing, "I had an idea about the case. Or I should say, Dennis Lehane had an idea about the case."

"Well, if it was a suggestion by Lehane, I suppose I'll listen to it," she quipped. "It's not likely to be a crazy theory then."

He huffed in mock offense. "If you're going to be mean…"

She snickered. "Sorry," she said unrepentantly. "Go on, oh master crime-solver."

"Thank you, that's better," he said loftily and then went on in his usual tone. "Dennis made the point that cases like this one, involving secrets and competition at the highest levels, usually come down to whoever had the most to lose if the secret came out. And that got me thinking, who would have the most to lose if it came out about the steroids, aside from Brian Morris?"

Castle did have a point. Murder as a cover-up was a classic motive. Brian Morris had a motive but it didn't look like he'd actually killed Zack Lindsey or even paid to have someone else kill him. But there was someone who had a stake in Brian Morris's career. "We need to talk to the Coach again," she said.

"Yes!" Castle agreed excitedly. "It's sort of like my mother and her acting studio. Great teachers are remembered too. And for the Olympics, the coaches whose students win can command whatever they want…"

"Coaching the next rising star," Kate continued for him.

"Exactly."

They exchanged the smiles of shared excitement as the pieces of a case came together into a coherent theory and Kate thought, not for the first time, that this was what she'd been missing in her years of working homicide without a real partner. The rush of solving a crime, of knowing that she was getting justice for the victim and the victim's families, was one thing but it was so much more, magnified, through sharing it with someone else.

But then again, everything meant more when it was shared with him.

"We'll dig deeper into the Coach's background first thing tomorrow, see if we can find a connection in the evidence so we're not just speculating when we talk to him," she said and then added, teasingly, "If this turns out to be right, you'll have to tell Lehane he helped us solve the case."

"And what do I get for helping to solve the case?"

"A cookie," she quipped.

"It better be chocolate chip then."

She laughed. "I think that can be arranged."

They had reached the door of the loft and Castle paused, turning to her. "Kate, I… you know I trust you, right?"

She met his eyes. "I know. I trust you too," she said with simple honesty.

She inserted her key into the lock and opened the door. And they were home.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: I think I'm pretty much rubbish at writing arguments, hence why I don't tend to write them, so I'm not sure how well this one turned out, especially because it never happened in canon, but again, I leave that to you all to judge._

 _As always, thank you, everyone, for reading and reviewing, especially to the Guest reviewers whom I can't thank personally._


	28. Chapter 27: To Love and Die in LA 1

Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. I'm sorry I haven't responded in person because of the glitch where isn't displaying reviews, which I didn't realize until after I'd deleted the email notifications.

This is the first of two chapters based on "To Love and Die in LA," which I'm sure a lot of people have been looking forward to. The first half of the chapter was inspired by the deleted scene for the ep.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 27_

Kate was having a good day. It was a Saturday so she hadn't needed to go into the precinct and had instead spent the day in a leisurely fashion. She had met up with Maddy for lunch and then done some laundry.

Castle was writing, although she suspected he was having some difficulty with whatever scene he was currently working on, judging from the intensity of his frown as he stared at his laptop screen and the stops and starts of his typing.

She decided to go for a run, partly because she didn't want to distract him and partly because it was a beautiful day for it, not really warm but not too cold either. She didn't push herself too much, just enjoyed being outside in the bright spring day (even if it did mean that it was too crowded in the Park), enjoyed the sun on her face, the looseness of her muscles and the pleasant tiredness afterwards.

Castle was still frowning at his laptop when she returned so she didn't even try to speak to him, just went straight through his office into the bedroom to shower and change, and then retreated back out into the living room.

She went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and had just taken her first gulp when she heard her phone beep with the notification that she had a message.

There was a missed call and a voicemail from a number she didn't recognize. Odd. Kate pressed the button to play the voicemail only to freeze at the sound of the so-familiar voice.

"Hey kid. It's Royce. I know I got no right to ask but I need your help. I just got back into town and the fire's coming fast. Please call me."

Royce. It was Royce. And he needed help.

She put her glass down on the counter with exaggerated care, suddenly not at all certain of her continued ability to retain her grip on it. Her fingers were clumsy—not quite trembling but certainly not deft—as she pressed the button to return the call, her heart rate picking up as she listened impatiently to the rings. There was no answer and she was dumped into voicemail.

"Royce, it's Beckett. I got your message and I—of course I'll help. Just… call me."

She threw the phone down and started to pace, her ability to think breaking through her shock, her training coming to the fore.

Royce was in trouble. Serious trouble, if he needed her help and was asking for it. Royce was no rookie. He might not be a cop anymore but when he had been one, he'd been a damn good one and if anyone knew how to take care of himself, it was him.

Damn it. What was Royce involved with?

She knew, whatever it was, it wouldn't be anything crooked, not on Royce's end. Not this time. He wouldn't call her for help if it were; he knew her better than that.

Her lips twisted. She'd already arrested him once. Royce, of all people, knew that there were limits to her loyalty and her friendship. He, of all people, knew that she wouldn't cover for him if he were involved in anything shady.

An eternity later—or so it felt but the clock said that barely ten minutes had passed—Kate lost her patience, never great at the best of times, and dialed again. Voicemail. Again.

"Royce, it's Beckett again. Call me when you get this."

She almost dropped her phone, roweling frustration getting the better of her, and abruptly slammed a hand against the counter. "Damn it!"

Why wasn't he answering his phone? She _hated_ this sort of waiting. Hated knowing something was going on but not knowing what or how Royce was involved—and he needed her help. Forced inaction always grated on her but it was worst when she knew there was something she needed to be doing. Worst when she knew someone—Royce—needed her help and she just didn't know how or why or where he was and so couldn't even begin to do anything.

She was jerked out of her futile, frustrated thoughts.

"Beckett? What's wrong?"

Oh. Castle. She belatedly realized that she'd momentarily forgotten that he was in the next room.

For a split second, old, old instincts to keep to herself, especially when this involved something as emotionally-fraught as Royce, tugged at her but another part of her, the greater, stronger part of her, wanted to tell him. Wanted him to have her back, to soothe her the way only he could. "It's Royce."

Shock blanked his expression as he gaped at her for a moment and then he was swiftly crossing the room to her. "What about Royce? Did something happen?"

"He called, left me a voicemail. Said he just got back in town and—"

"Back in town? Where has he been?" he interrupted her.

"He moved to LA after he lost his bounty hunter's license," she answered succinctly, pushing down the stab of emotion at the reminder of how and why he'd lost the license. "He was trying to make a fresh start," she said, her voice not quite steady for a moment before she quickly got it back under control. "He said he just got back and he needs my help."

"Needs your help how? What's going on?"

Her strained calm momentarily faltered. "I don't know! He didn't tell me anything and he's not answering his phone and I just don't know!"

He lifted his hand and slid it beneath her hair to cup the back of her neck in a calming gesture. "When did he call?" he asked briskly, his tone belying the tenderness of his touch.

"About 15 minutes ago, while I was in the shower."

"I thought I heard your phone ring. Okay, what exactly did he say?"

She felt a sudden flare of irrational annoyance at Castle—why hadn't he picked up her phone if he'd heard it ring? If he had managed to talk to Royce, she would know what was going on. But no, that wasn't fair. Castle never answered her cell phone and under normal circumstances, she would ream him out for it if he ever did. "Not much, just that he was back in town and needed my help and that the fire's coming fast and asked me to call him."

The matter-of-fact repetition of facts about Royce's call had calmed her, she realized belatedly. Which was why Castle had asked and in the way he had, his voice businesslike rather than soothing. He knew her so well.

"Royce just might not be in a place where he can answer the phone, Beckett, if he'd hopped onto the subway or something to try to stay in a public place where he'd be safer. Royce was a cop; he won't be a sitting duck."

Kate nodded. "You're right." It was what she had told herself earlier but now, she was in a better state of mind to accept it, felt more herself again. Still frustrated and impatient about not being able to act but no longer at the mercy of her emotions. Thanks to Castle. (It still seemed a little odd that Castle, who could act like such a hyperactive child at times, could be such a calming influence but he was. When it mattered, in the few times when she was more emotional, it helped to have him near, to be the stable center of her world.)

But as the minutes and hours wore on, still with no word from Royce, Kate's calm began to feel more brittle, fractured. First it had been one hour since he'd left his voicemail and he still hadn't called (although she had, twice, and left another voice message. Just in case.) And then another hour had passed, as the daylight had faded and full darkness set in, and still there was no word and Kate was beginning to have a very bad feeling about this. If Royce had been in so much trouble—danger—that he had called her for help and now wasn't answering his phone for hours on end…

Castle cajoled her into eating some dinner, which she did, rather mechanically, although afterwards she couldn't have sworn to what she'd eaten.

She tried calling Royce twice more and left yet another voice message, not even sure why except that she had the irrational thought that maybe just leaving the messages would mean that surely he would be able to listen to them later.

When her phone finally rang, she almost ended up dropping it in her fumbling, frantic haste to answer the call. "Beckett."

It wasn't Royce. It was the Captain. "Beckett, it's me. It's about Mike Royce. I'm sorry, Beckett, but… we just found him."

Royce. Oh god, Royce.

She was just… numb. Oddly, at that moment, she felt no grief, felt… nothing really. As much as she had half been expecting such news in the last hour and more, now that she'd had her fears confirmed, she was numb.

Montgomery hesitated and then finally went on, sounding more uncertain than she had ever heard him sound, "Royce had one of your business cards in his pocket and he'd written, 'call her' on it."

She tried not to flinch. Oh god, _Royce_. She told herself it meant that he had trusted that she would still help him, in spite of the way they'd parted, but it was cold comfort now.

Montgomery sighed. "He wanted you to be involved."

"Where is he?" she managed to ask, her voice sounding stiff and alien to her own ears.

Montgomery gave her the address, told her he was sorry one more time, and then told her that he could deal with the crime scene.

She ignored that, only thanked him automatically, before ending the call.

Royce was dead. She hadn't helped him and now he was dead.

She didn't think she'd moved but she found herself being pulled into Castle's arms.

"I'm so sorry, Beckett," he was saying quietly. "I'm sorry."

For one brief second, she let herself lean against him, let the reality of his warmth take away some of her own inner chill.

And then she was pulling away, standing up as she shoved her emotions away, locking them behind a steel door. She had a job to do now. She had failed Royce in life; there was no way she would fail him in death. She would find whoever had killed Royce and bring him to justice. It was all she could do, now, for the man who had been her mentor, her friend.

"I need to go. I have a case." It was just another case—that was the only way she could think about it right now.

She grabbed her gun, shrugged into a jacket, and was out the door of the loft within a minute. Castle hadn't responded but he was right behind her, beside her. There was something… nice… about his silent assumption that he could and should go with her, that his place at her side was automatic. She didn't think about it, couldn't think about it now, but it was there, a little tendril of warmth sprouting in her chest.

She drove with a sort of ruthless concentration, pushing aside any other thoughts that might try to intrude, until she pulled up at the crime scene to see that Captain Montgomery had apparently just arrived, standing beside his cruiser.

She didn't waste time with any pleasantries. "Where is he?"

Montgomery didn't blink an eye. "Turn around and go back home and let me handle this."

Oh no. He wasn't shutting her out of this case. Royce had wanted her to be involved, she was going to be involved. She wasn't going to fail him now. Not again. And she damn well didn't need to be shielded from unpleasant realities. "Sir, I've seen dead bodies before."

The Captain didn't look happy but he knew her tone, recognized that she wasn't going anywhere, so he stepped back, let her step past.

She strode forward, ignoring the fact that her stomach was twisting itself into knots.

Castle finally broke his rather uncharacteristic silence at her side to venture, cautiously, "Kate, you don't want to remember him like this."

Not Castle too. He didn't get to be protective about this. She didn't need protection. "Castle, if it was me lying there, would you just walk away?"

She sensed rather than saw his flinch at the stark words and belatedly realized how harsh the words, the scenario, she'd posited would sound to him. She reached out and caught his hand in hers, squeezing it briefly, and then letting it go as they reached Lanie, who came towards them.

"I'm so sorry, honey."

Kate looked down, her eyes freezing on the upper half of a familiar face. Royce. At least his eyes were closed, she thought. She didn't know if she could deal with seeing his eyes open and blank and staring.

She twitched, jerking her gaze away from Royce, not daring to look at Lanie's face because she thought the compassion in it might rip away her tenuous hold on her emotions.

"Just tell me what happened," she forced herself to say, sternly controlling her tone.

"He was shot in the leg. Judging from the blood trail, I'd say the bullet broke the bone. He tried to hide but… I found this in his pocket. He just flew in from Los Angeles this afternoon."

Kate accepted the boarding pass for a flight from LA to New York on QIR Airlines, one of the smaller, discount airlines, she vaguely remembered. His flight had been scheduled to land a quarter after four, she noted.

She heard his familiar voice in her head. _I just got back into town and the fire's coming fast._ He'd called her the moment he'd arrived in Manhattan, she guessed. If she'd been able to answer his call… She cut off the wondering, the endless string of _if only_ it would lead to. It didn't do any good.

"Lanie, could I…"

"Sure."

Kate sucked in a deep breath and then let it out again, inwardly steeling herself, as she stepped around Lanie and then knelt down by Royce. _Oh, Royce… I'm sorry, Royce…_ Slowly, she lifted one gloved hand to touch his hair, remembering with a twist of her heart, the times she'd looked at him and wondered what he would do if she reached out and touched her fingers to his face, touched him in any non-platonic way. She never had, of course. He'd been her training officer, the line had been clear. And at the time Royce had been in a casual relationship with a Robbery detective, what had her name been—Goodman, no, Godwin, that was it. Not that Royce had ever told her about it but it had been common knowledge within the precinct; with the way cops gossiped, that sort of thing could never stay secret for long. So she'd known and he'd known she'd known and… And nothing. She cut off that line of memories, only to be bombarded by others. Of the way she'd looked to him for approval, of the way she'd pushed herself with the only reward she'd hoped for to hear his gruff voice saying _nice job, kid_ or _way to go, kid_ or some variant of rare, laconic cop praise.

She remembered the way he'd started his message by saying that he had no right to ask her for help. No right—as if their friendship had never been. _Royce, didn't you know I forgave you?_

Tears pricked at the back of her eyes and she quickly blinked them back, forcing down the tidal wave of emotion that was threatening to drag her under. She couldn't. She had a job to do. For Royce.

She pushed herself to her feet and stepped back.

"Royce had… something else in his pocket," Lanie told her, holding out a slightly crumpled, folded sheet of paper. "It's addressed to you."

Kate took the paper, unfolding it and scanning it quickly, the first words seeming to imprint themselves on her mind.

She pressed her lips together, the unwanted tears pricking again.

"Is it about the case?" Castle asked quietly.

She jerked her head a little. "No."

She almost started, quickly folding up the letter, as Esposito and Ryan came up to her with the murder weapon. The killer had used a silencer, allowing him to hunt Royce down and shoot him in broad daylight.

The boys had already set uniforms to canvass the area and she nodded in approval as Espo promised to run ballistics on the gun.

And then Ryan, after a brief hesitation, mentioned that they'd found Royce's cell phone. It had either fallen out of his pocket or been dropped when he'd been shot in the leg. Royce's cell phone—a new burner phone so he had been in trouble, not that there was any surprise in that—that showed that she was the only person he had called and all the voicemails she'd left for him, all unheard. He would never hear them now.

Captain Montgomery came up to her. "Beckett, go home."

"No, sir, I'm fine," she began in automatic protest that he overrode by continuing on as if she hadn't spoken.

"The unis will need time to finish the canvass and it'll take time for ballistics to come back. I know you want to be out there, working through the night to get this guy, but there's nothing more for you to do right now. You go home, take some time to process, and then we can start fresh first thing tomorrow. That's an order, Detective."

She opened her mouth to argue but then forcibly closed it again. She knew Montgomery's tone and his expression. This was one of those times when arguing would do her no good but might land her in hot water for insubordination.

"Yes, sir."

She went home.

Castle, beside her, preserved a sympathetic silence although she felt his frequent concerned glances.

Once back in the loft, he hovered, clearly not quite sure what she needed, and she turned to him, giving him a twitch of her lips that was the closest she could come to a smile.

"Castle, I need some space right now." She took out Royce's letter. "To read this."

"Of course, Kate. Whatever you need." He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. "I'm going to go up and check on Alexis."

Kate retreated into their bedroom, feeling a little niggle of guilt at essentially banishing Castle from his own bedroom but she couldn't—she _couldn't_ —read Royce's last words to her with him there, with his worried gaze on her.

It was still a little early but Kate changed into leggings and the loose, red sleep shirt she'd appropriated from Castle last year first before curling up in the bed.

She had to take a few deep breaths before she opened the letter.

 _Dear Kate,_

 _I bet I've written this letter a hundred times. Someday I might actually send it. There's no excuse for what I did, especially what I did to you. But I'm on a righteous path now. And I hope someday that path earns me your forgiveness._

This part was all she'd read earlier and the words replayed in her mind in Royce's well-remembered voice. Someday? _Oh Royce, did you really not know that I already forgave you?_ She had loved him and even if she had no longer loved him last fall, he was still Royce, still the man she had once idolized so much, still her friend.

Tears were pricking at the back of her eyes but she blinked them back and forced herself to move on. It was clear that Royce had had some difficulty in writing the letter; there were lines, words, he'd crossed out here and there, sentences he started and never finished. But then he seemed to have found some more confidence.

 _I'm not going to make any excuses for what I did or why. You know why I did what I did. Hell, I know plenty of guys who managed to convince themselves that the wrong thing was the right thing. The fact that I fell into that trap haunts me and the idea that my weakness almost got you killed is something I have a hard time living with._

 _So why am I writing this? Because I think there's a chance we might never talk again. And if that happens, I don't want you thinking that I had any hard feelings about the way things went down between us. You did what you had to do. And I'm as proud of you now as I ever was._

She dropped the letter, her hands trembling, and even if they hadn't been, she wouldn't have been able to read through the tears in her eyes. She folded up the letter slowly—she didn't think she could bear to read any more right now.

She shut her eyes against the tears, suddenly irrationally wishing she could still be angry at Royce for what he'd done. Anger would be easier to deal with. But she had stopped being angry long ago and now all she felt was a sick regret that she'd never had a chance to mend things between her and Royce, that he had died still believing she was angry at him, that she hadn't forgiven him. Why hadn't she tried calling him, reaching out to him in some way after he'd moved to LA? Of course she'd been busy. Busy and distracted and, yes, happy, too happy to want to dig up painful memories. She'd been happy and self-absorbed in her very happiness. But she should have tried to call Royce. She'd known that he wouldn't call her but why hadn't she? Except she knew why. Because it would be hard, emotionally-fraught. She wasn't given to procrastination but she was a past master of avoidance, at least of emotional things. She didn't like to talk about things.

And now she would never be able to talk to Royce again. Would never be able to tell him that she'd forgiven him, that she wasn't angry at him. He had never even listened to the voicemails she'd left him so he might have died believing she wouldn't want to help him. She heard his voice in her head again: _I know I got no right to ask_ … So tentative, so unassuming, so unlike the confident cop she'd once known, the one who'd taught her how to be a cop.

Snippets of his letter replayed in her mind. _I think there's a chance we might never talk again… I'm as proud of you now as I ever was…_

She choked on a sob. "Castle!" She didn't consciously decide to call him, didn't consciously realize she needed him. It was almost an instinct now—amazingly.

He appeared immediately. (Afterwards, it occurred to her that he must have checked on Alexis briefly and then retreated to his office, too worried to stay any distance away but still giving her space.)

And she barely had time to breathe before she was in his arms, surrounded by his warmth, cossetted by his strength, and comforted by his love.

Kate turned her face into his shoulder and wondered, a little fuzzily, how she'd ever thought she needed space. This, being with Castle, being held by him, was the best comfort.

He stroked a gentle hand down her hair. "I'm so sorry, Kate," he murmured after a long while. "I'm sorry we couldn't save him."

She let out a shaky breath and clutched him tighter. "I never talked to him again after I arrested him." There was a painful pause. "And now I'll never be able to talk to him again." Her voice almost cracked; it did quaver. "I never… got to tell him that I forgave him… He said… in his letter, he said… he was on a righteous path and he hoped… he hoped that someday that would earn my forgiveness. He didn't know—I never got to tell him that I already forgave him…"

He tightened his arms around her. "He knew, Kate. Whatever else, I'm sure Royce knew you'd forgive him."

She sniffed and turned her head up to give him a rather watery version of her strict Detective Beckett look. "You can't know that. Don't tell me that just to make me feel better."

"I'm not." His tone softened. "I wouldn't do that, Beckett. But I am sure that Royce knew you'd forgive him."

"How?"

"The evidence. Royce was in trouble of some kind and you were the one he called. Royce would know other cops since he was one himself but he didn't call anyone else; he called you. Because he knew you were the best and he knew he could count on you to help him. He was trying to get away from his killer—we know that because he kept on going after he was shot in the leg—but even when he knew he was cornered, he chose a place in the jurisdiction of the 12th, not anywhere else in the city. And in case things went south, he had your business card in his pocket, ensuring that if anything happened to him, you would be contacted. Everything he did shows that when the chips were down, you were the person he wanted to have his back. Those aren't the actions of a man who didn't think you'd forgive him."

Castle was right. She hadn't considered, hadn't been able to consider Royce's actions with enough dispassion to realize. Royce must have known she'd forgive him, just as he must have known that however things had ended between them, she would help him. Just as he had known that she would get justice for him.

He had known. He hadn't died believing she was still angry at him.

The hard knot of regret and guilt and remorse that had taken up residence in her chest began to dissolve to be replaced by grief, pure and untainted by blame. And finally, she allowed herself to cry.

* * *

Kate was fully in control of herself, back in Detective Beckett mode, when she and Castle arrived back at the precinct the next morning. They were in before 7:30 and both Esposito and Ryan arrived well before 8, in defiance of the fact that it was a Sunday morning. In any other workplace, among any other types of people, she would have thanked them for their loyalty but they were cops so Kate greeted them both with a brisk nod and told them, "You're late. I expected you guys here half an hour ago. Do I need to do all the work around here?"

Esposito and Ryan returned the greeting in kind, Espo getting in a dig that he'd bet Ryan just couldn't decide which of his suit vests to wear.

And then, the moment over, they all snapped into work mode, Espo checking in with ballistics while Ryan did what he could to trace Royce's actions from the moment he landed at the airport yesterday.

The case started moving quickly when lab results made it obvious that Royce's killer must have tracked him from LA and then—Kate's gut dropped at Ryan's announcement—that he'd hopped on a plane back to LA two hours after Royce was killed. She mentally steeled herself for what she was sure would be a fight since the NYPD—by which she meant Captain Montgomery—was not going to willingly expend the resources to send a detective across country.

And as she predicted, Montgomery wasn't, flatly refusing the request before she'd even finished asking it and insisting that they get more evidence and then only going so far as to say he would contact the LAPD.

The LAPD!

Kate had to fight not to scoff. "You'll contact the LAPD? This is my case. This happened in our jurisdiction. You think the LAPD is going to lift a finger?" She was too well-versed in the way these things worked to believe that. Oh, departmental cooperation was one thing when it came to something like finding Michael Rutherford in the Philip Westlake case—then, they'd had probable cause, the suspect's name, and his picture, albeit a rather dated one. All the LAPD had needed to do was search the DMV database for Michael Rutherford, compare pictures, and then make the arrest.

In this case, they had none of that. All they had now was an obvious alias, no way of finding out the killer's actual name, no concrete proof to tie him to the murder. The LAPD would need to put in a lot of actual detective work by looking into Royce's life and what he'd been involved with, which had to have a lot of money at stake to make it worthwhile to chase Royce across the country in order to silence him. And for a crime that had happened outside the LAPD's jurisdiction—and which would never show up in the crime stats for the jurisdiction—no, they wouldn't put in the manpower necessary. They would nominally agree, say all the right things, then assign it to a detective who would set the file aside for more pressing matters, and nothing would actually get done. And with every passing day, the chances of finding Royce's killer would dwindle exponentially.

"Kate, you're too close to this!"

"No, sir, I am committed!" she shot back. "I am not compromised!" She wasn't. She'd taken the night to process; she'd grieved. She was _fine_!

"You're torn up!" Montgomery softened his tone. "Kate, things between you and Royce ended badly. I get it. But that emotion is exactly why I need to assign this to someone else."

Kate met her Captain's eyes. He wasn't budging on this. His gentle tone aside, she knew his expression, knew him.

Fine. Well, if he wouldn't let her… Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

She schooled her expression. "You know what? You're right. I am too close to this." She spoke flatly. "I have some vacation days coming up. I think now would be a good time."

She turned to stalk out of the office only to be brought up short by Montgomery's voice. "Kate."

She turned.

"I hope you're not thinking about doing something reckless," he warned.

She met his eyes. "No, sir." She wasn't lying. It wasn't reckless to do what she was about to do. She'd considered it and made her decision. It was sensible. It was necessary.

She turned on her heel and left Montgomery's office, heading straight to her desk only to grab up her jacket.

Only to be brought up short again, by Castle this time. "Where are you going?"

She hesitated almost infinitesimally before she turned to face him. This one would be harder. Castle knew her too well. "My apartment," she answered, truthfully enough. Her apartment still had her summer clothes since she hadn't yet had a chance to move them all into the loft. April in LA meant the middle of summer in New York, temperature-wise.

And that aside, she needed to do this on her own. She couldn't involve Castle in this. If she was going to be suspended for what she was about to do—she didn't really think Montgomery would do that but had to be prepared for the possibility that he might—so be it. She owed Royce no less. Castle didn't need to be taken down with her. He'd only met Royce once. Anyway, he had responsibilities here. He couldn't simply leave town, not when he had Alexis to take care of.

"The hell you are," he retorted, some temper in his voice.

She was glad to hear the note of exasperation. It made it easier. "Castle, please! I just… I need to be alone right now." She softened her voice. She knew what she needed to do but she didn't want to hurt him. "I'll talk to you later, okay?"

He didn't look entirely appeased but he didn't argue. She'd known he wouldn't. He tried so hard to give her space when she said she needed it. Her heart pinched a little. Castle, who always tried to do what she said she needed.

Her last glimpse of him before the elevator door closed was of his frown, concern crimping his brow.

Her apartment felt odd, unfamiliar to her, as if it wasn't really hers at all. Kate had to fight back the irrational feeling that she was actually standing in someone else's apartment. It was silly. The apartment was still hers, in actual fact. Her lease wasn't up for more than a month and her rent was already paid up until then. Around half her clothes were still here. Admittedly, she hadn't actually slept in her apartment in the last month and had only returned for brief visits every week or so to check on things, pick up any stray pieces of mail, and retrieve a few little items here and there. But really, that was no reason to feel like the apartment no longer belonged to her at all.

She ignored the feeling. Ignored, too, the more pervasive sense that something—someone—was missing. She and Castle weren't conjoined twins. She was perfectly capable of taking care of this, bringing Royce's killer to justice, on her own. She had to do this on her own. This was her task; Royce had been her training officer, her friend. She would call Castle when she was at the airport, let him know what she was doing, and apologize to him. (She didn't kid herself that he'd be happy about her going off on her own but he would understand.)

The picture on the side table caught her eye and she dropped down heavily on the couch, picking up the frame with exaggerated care as if it might shatter if she so much as breathed wrong. Her younger self, in uniform, smiled out at her, along side Royce, looking much younger and heartbreakingly happy. She remembered this picture being taken. The then-captain of the 36th precinct, where she'd been stationed after the Academy, had retired and there had been a small party in the precinct in his honor. Nothing too fancy, that not being cop-style, but there had been beers and pizza and people had generally been relaxed, sociable. Someone had had the idea to take pictures of all the partner pairings, or in her case, the rookie three months out of the Academy and her training officer. The picture had been in a box of some old pictures and random keepsakes kept in her bedroom closet in her old apartment, saving it from the explosion, and when she'd moved into her apartment and been going through her pictures, she'd come across it again and framed it. And even after arresting Royce, she had not moved it.

She heard his voice in her head. _I'm as proud of you now as I ever was._

She smiled down at the picture, although the smile was shaky, and somewhat marred by a small choke of emotion. She touched one gentle finger to Royce's smiling face in the picture. "I won't let you down, Royce." She hadn't been able to save his life but she would catch his killer. A line she'd read once returned to her: _The dead have a claim on us even heavier than that of the living, for they cannot hear our explanations, and we cannot ask their forgiveness.*_ It was a line that had resonated in her mind when she'd read it. It was true.

She returned the picture to its usual spot, making a mental note to take it over to the loft next time.

With a fresh wave of determination, she stood up to pack. She methodically and efficiently packed a small bag, throwing in enough summer clothes for a couple days, along with some makeup and toiletries. It occurred to her to be glad that she was going to need to check her bag anyway because it was the only way to bring her gun; it made it that much simpler to pack without needing to worry about the limitations for carry-on luggage.

Packing finished, she quickly changed out of her work clothes into a more casual and comfortable outfit for the long flight.

She had just picked up her bag to leave her apartment when she heard a knock on her door.

Castle. She recognized his knock. And in spite of herself, in spite of the fact that she knew he wasn't going to be happy with her decision to go to LA alone, she felt a little, unreasoning spurt of happiness inside her, the happiness she always felt on seeing him these days.

Castle's eyes went immediately to her bag and he smirked—what?

He didn't bother with a greeting, only said briskly, "Oh good, I hoped you'd be packed. I've got a car waiting outside to take us to the airport."

What? She gaped at him and then belatedly came to her senses. "Castle, you are not coming with me. I can't ask you to do this."

He scoffed. "Of course you're not asking. I'm volunteering."

"Castle, don't be flippant. You only met Royce once. There's no reason for you to be involved."

Something like temper sparked in his eyes. "The hell there isn't. I'm your _partner_ and anything to do with you concerns me."

"This isn't one of our cases. You heard Montgomery. I'm off this case and I'm not a cop in LA. I won't have any jurisdiction or authority. Montgomery could kick you out of the precinct for good for doing this."

He gave her a look of entirely spurious, wide-eyed innocence. "I don't know what you're talking about. The studio's been trying to convince me to make a _Heat Wave_ set visit for weeks now. And if I choose to whisk my girlfriend off for a couple days to the land of surfing and sunshine, what business is it of the NYPD's?"

She bit her lip to keep from smiling. He had thought this out and he was so cute when he looked so self-satisfied, like a little boy who had just won a prize (not that she would ever tell him so.)

"What about Alexis?"

"I talked to her and my mother. She'll be fine for a couple days without us. My mother can look after her." He made a small face. "Or Alexis will look after my mother. Either way, they'll be fine and they understand."

Any small chance she had of resisting crumbled. Oh, who was she kidding? She hadn't had a chance from the second he showed up. There were times when she could talk him out of something; this wasn't one of them. And it wasn't as if she'd really wanted to work without him. Fighting against her own inclinations and him at the same time was never going to work.

She closed the distance between them, walking straight into his arms and burying her face in his shoulder. "Thank you."

He pressed a kiss to her hair. "Partners, Kate. Anyway, going rogue is kind of my specialty, remember?"

She huffed a soft laugh, turning her face up to kiss his chin. "Right. Obviously, I'll need your expertise at going rogue."

He pulled a face of exaggerated offense. "Don't mock, Beckett. Going rogue takes finely honed skill."

She snorted. "Finely honed, ha."

"If you're done making fun of me, we should go since there's a car waiting. I already got our tickets."

"You already bought tickets? For both of us? Castle, I…"

"No protests, Beckett. Whisking my girlfriend off for a romantic trip, remember? I can't do that if said girlfriend tries to pay for the plane tickets."

She gave up. He never did like it when she tried to thank him for his generosity and he positively hated it when she made a protest. "You're just enjoying getting to call me your girlfriend, aren't you?" she quipped instead.

"Oh, speaking of being my girlfriend, you should pack a dress. We have to go out for a nice dinner at least once while we're in LA."

She pursed her lips in mock annoyance but couldn't hold the expression. "I suppose you would insist on that."

"Yes, absolutely."

"I suppose, if you insist, I can go out to a nice restaurant and eat delicious food," she sighed with mock reluctance before she went into her bedroom, heading to her closet. A dress for a nice dinner—her eyes caught on the dress she'd bought to surprise him for his birthday. (Hence its presence in the closet in her apartment as she could hardly surprise Castle by wearing a dress that had been hanging in his closet.) As it had happened, though, Alexis had been the one to plan Castle's birthday dinner, assuming the role automatically, and Kate could hardly deny the girl the right to do what had always been her task before, so the dress had gone unworn. Now, well, it would serve as a way of thanking him for flying them across the country to catch Royce's killer. A small smile curved her lips at the thought of Castle's reaction.

The dress packed, she left her bedroom.

"All set, Beckett? Ready to show the LAPD how the best cop in New York does it?"

"Castle, we need to be flying under the radar in LA so if I had my way, the only time the LAPD finds out we're even in the city is when we call them to make the official arrest of Neil McCauley, whoever he is."

"Stealth detecting. We'll be like ninjas!"

Oh god, what had she gotten herself into now? Kate rolled her eyes but had to bite her lip to hold back a smile. He was irrepressible.

Travelling with Castle was, unsurprisingly, an eye-opening experience into the lives of the rich and famous. Kate had to squelch her urge to gape a little at flying first-class and the fact that they offered complimentary champagne in actual champagne flutes (or wine or beer and any other soda if one preferred).

And of course, when they landed in LA after the most pleasant flying experience of Kate's life, the car Castle had rented was a red Ferrari convertible.

She raised her eyebrows at him. "This is your idea of flying under the radar, Castle?"

He scoffed. "Oh come on, in LA, this fits right in."

Stealthy, yeah, right.

As predictably, the hotel Castle had booked was right on the beach and he was greeted personally and by name by the concierge, who took them right up to a huge suite.

"We're so happy to have you back, Mr. Castle," Maurice, the concierge, was saying as he ushered them inside. "I've taken the liberty of setting up your suite just the way you like it. And I've scheduled a couple's massage at 7."

Castle caught Kate's look and hastily added, "You can take away the roses and go ahead and cancel the couple's massage."

Maurice nodded and one of the bell-boys removed the large bouquet of red roses as Castle turned back to her after closing the door behind them.

"The last time I was here, I brought this Parisian supermodel…"

She narrowed her eyes at him and he broke off. "And I don't remember anything more about her," he hastily added.

"Good answer. Two bedrooms, Castle?"

He sobered. "I wasn't sure if you'd… need space or anything. I know you're grieving and…"

Her heart turned into a soft, melting thing in her chest. Oh, this man, who tried so hard to give her space when he thought she might need it.

She went up to him and slipped her arms around his neck, kissing him softly. "I don't think we'll need the other bedroom."

His expression eased as he slid his arms around her waist. "Okay. So, you hungry or do you want to change or something?"

She stepped back. "I want to start the investigation. Montgomery isn't going to be happy with us so hopefully the faster we can close this case, the more likely it is he doesn't find out about it."

"Whatever you say, Beckett. But we can still do dinner out tonight?" he asked hopefully.

"Yes, we can go out for dinner but first we need to work."

He bounced a little on his feet. "Great! I'll have Maurice book us a table somewhere nice," he enthused as they left the suite.

Kate couldn't help but smile in spite of the seriousness of their reason for coming here. It was just… him. Silly, excitable man-child that he was. As much as it occasionally irritated her, she loved the way he brightened her days, made her smile.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _* From the book "A Letter of Mary" by Laurie R. King._

* * *

 _A/N 2: Fair warning that I'm not sure I'll be able to post next week as I'll be travelling for half of it. Sorry!_

 _As for the series finale, I only watched the last two minutes of it to see the happy ending Castle and Beckett got and as nice as it was, I'm still never going to forgive the current show writers for what they did in S8. S7's finale would have been better as the real series finale. But at any rate, I will keep writing about Castle and Beckett as long as I have the inspiration to do so and there are people willing to read what I write._

 _Thank you to everyone for reading and reviewing. Fanfiction really is all we have left now and it does make things easier._


	29. Chapter 28: To Love and Die in LA 2

Author's Note: Apologies for not being able to post last week but RL got in the way. But without further ado, here's the second of the two chapters based on "To Love and Die in LA," including the famous (infamous?) couch scene in the hotel and the end of Royce's letter, which I'm sure a lot of people have been looking forward to. I hope this chapter does the episode justice.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 28_

One surprising encounter with Gene Simmons, a near-arrest, a tongue-lashing from Captain Montgomery, and a visit to the movie studio later, Kate and Castle finally returned to the hotel. It had been a busy afternoon but productive, as they'd managed to figure out just what Royce had been involved in to get him killed.

Castle glanced at Kate as they entered the suite. "Our dinner reservation at Spago is in less than an hour. Are you sure you're up for it? We don't have to go."

"I'm hungry and you promised me a good meal, Castle."

"One good meal coming right up," he promised. "But first, we need to change." He waggled his brows at her. "I want to see which dress you packed."

She managed a small laugh. "And so you will. Later. I think I'll change in the other room so it'll be a real surprise."

"Ooh, now I'm really looking forward to seeing you in your dress. So I'll come knock on the door in a half hour?"

She gave him a teasing look, her heart lifting. "It's such a long way. Make sure you leave enough time for the trip." All 20 feet of it across the main room of the suite.

"I'll make sure to leave, oh, at least 30 seconds ahead of time," he promised with exaggerated gravity.

She smirked. "Sure you don't need more time than that? After all, people do tend to move slower with age."

He spluttered with histrionic outrage as she shut the door of the other bedroom behind her and she could still hear his disgruntled muttering through the door.

Her smile faded as she moved away from the door towards the en suite bathroom to change. She told herself that it was irrational to feel guilty over these moments of enjoyment, of briefly forgetting about grief, but it didn't really help, as she knew from experience. She would still feel these stabs of guilt for laughing or having fun for a while longer, certainly at least until she could bring Royce's killer to justice.

But she had Castle and thanks to him and for his sake, she would get past the grief and the guilt too. And she did want to show her appreciation for his flying them across the country for this case, for all his help today.

She shimmied into the dress she'd bought with Castle's reaction in mind and then touched up her makeup and styled her hair, pinning it up, partly because Castle always appreciated it when her hair was up, baring her neck to his appreciative gaze (and his lips) but also because it would add to the effect of her dress. That done, she surveyed herself in the mirror. The dress was a shade of forest green that she knew would bring out the flecks of green in her eyes. The style was deceptively demure on first glance because aside from nicely outlining her figure, it didn't appear to be made to attract attention. The décolletage was positively prim, enough that Castle would have whole-heartedly approved of it for one of Alexis's dresses, and the skirt fell a ways below her knees, adding to the conservative impression. Until one noticed that the slit up the side of the skirt went halfway up her thigh and the back of the dress was nonexistent, except for two criss-crossed straps, leaving her back bare down to the small of her back.

Kate quite deliberately shrugged on a wrap, planning to keep it firmly in place until they arrived at Spago. After all, half the fun of a dress like this one was in the reveal.

Castle knocked on the bedroom door promptly and she opened it, watching his eyes skim down her figure and knew he'd noticed the slit in her skirt when his gaze froze on the length of her bare leg just visible. She estimated that a good 5 seconds passed before his eyes moved back up her body to meet her eyes.

"God, you're beautiful," he blurted out and Kate smiled, her heart warming. She loved the way Castle so often lost any claim to suavity that he had when it came to her.

"Thank you, Castle." He looked pretty damn good himself, but then he always did when he dressed up.

She slipped her arm into his as they left the suite and she felt another little flutter of amazement that this was really her life now, staying in luxury suites at expensive hotels and about to go out to an equally expensive restaurant while being driven in a Ferrari convertible. She didn't intimidate easily but even now, the occasional reminder of the vast gulf between her income and Castle's caused a pang of self-distrust. How could she, a regular cop whose entire yearly salary was pocket change to Castle, possibly be enough for him, a multi-millionaire celebrity author who used to date supermodels?

Spago wasn't far from the hotel but even so the short drive was enough for her to have managed to shake off her moment of insecurity. She couldn't doubt him and what he felt for her now. Somehow—and she still wasn't sure why or how—she was enough for Castle, made Castle happy.

Of course, now that the adrenaline of chasing down leads had worn off, she was starting to feel tired, the effects of the long day combined with the time difference adding up, not helped by her emotions. But she was hungry and it wasn't like brooding over Royce in the suite would do any good.

Spago was, predictably and obviously, a restaurant meant to cater to the wealthy, with free valet parking, another uniformed valet waiting to open the car door for her, and a maître d' who greeted Castle familiarly by name before having a waiter show them to their table.

Castle was the one who pulled back her chair for her and then made a strangled noise as she slipped off her wrap revealing the back—or lack thereof—of her dress. She smiled to herself as she took her seat and Castle bent to brush his lips against her neck, making a delicious little shiver go through her, before husking in her ear, "Have I mentioned that I really like your dress?"

She turned her head to smile at him. "I thought you would."

Castle kept up a light, steady stream of conversation as they ordered and then ate their meals (which were delicious, although Kate was guiltily aware that she wasn't really doing her meal justice), sticking to easy, undemanding topics that allowed her to respond when necessary but didn't require her to put much thought into what she said. It was enjoyable, relaxing—and exactly what she needed. (He knew her so well.)

He didn't make any mention of the case. The closest he came to it was chatting a little about the _Heat Wave_ movie, recounting some stories about Tony, the director, who they'd met that afternoon, mentioning Natalie Rhodes's whereabouts.

"I don't remember hearing that Natalie had any drug problems, unlike a lot of stars," Kate commented.

"I imagine her PR people found a way of keeping it quiet. That's what they're there for and you'd be amazed the sorts of things they can cover up."

"That sounds like the voice of experience, Castle. Come on, 'fess up, what have your PR people covered up?" she teased.

He laughed a little, although he had the grace to look rather self-conscious and sheepish. "Let me put it this way. Did you ever read anything in the papers about me and a certain police horse?"

She burst out laughing. Oh god, the police horse! She'd almost forgotten about that choice bit of his past. And he was right, she realized. She never had heard anything about that; it had been a surprise when she'd read about it on his rap sheet. It belatedly occurred to her to be surprised that she hadn't heard anything about that incident. Especially as for obvious reasons, she had idly taken note of the publicity about him, had always marveled (and been a little disgusted) at the apparent shallowness of the man when compared to the real complexity of the books that he somehow managed to write. "The police horse incident! That's right. I didn't know about that until I pulled your rap sheet."

His lips twisted a little in self-mockery. "Paula's damn good at her job and she earned her bonus that year."

The mention of Paula rather dampened Kate's amusement. She just couldn't like the other woman, found her manner to be abrasive and her treatment of Castle to be either too possessive or too pushy. She knew Castle didn't particularly enjoy Paula's company but he accepted her for what she was (which was characteristic of Castle's generosity) and she was, as he said, very good at her job.

Castle changed the subject, moving off himself, to talking about meeting the actors playing Raley and Ochoa.

Kate laughed a little. "We've gotta tell Ryan and Espo about meeting their doppelgangers. So creepy."

"Definitely," he agreed. "That actor playing Raley wanted to know what Raley's motivation was."

"Motivation? Raley's a cop, what more motivation does he need?"

"I know, right? That's pretty much what I told him. I guess he wanted to make it more complicated. Give Raley some dramatic backstory."

"Well, dramatic backstory aside, he's not entirely wrong," she conceded. "Good cops are made, not born. A lot has to do with the people around them, their captain, their partner, their training officer." She broke off abruptly, the last words falling into the silence like rocks. She hadn't thought, had been lulled by the ease of their conversation into forgetting. Kate lowered her gaze to the table, idly pushing the remaining scraps of her food around on her plate.

Castle reached out and wrapped a gentle hand around hers. He didn't say he was sorry or otherwise comment on the change in mood. He knew her too well for that. "You ready to head back?" was all he asked.

She managed a faint smile. "Yeah, that sounds good."

He signaled for a waiter and paid the bill and as they left the restaurant, he rested his hand on her lower back, slipping his hand beneath her wrap to touch her bare skin. His large hand was warm and protective and for once, Kate allowed herself to curve into his hand, leaning into him. She was the strong, independent Detective but sometimes, it was… nice to have someone take care of her. Nice to know that when she was tired, when she wasn't strong, she had someone who could—and would—step in and be strong for her. She, who hadn't had anyone to take care of her in the more than ten years since her mother had died. She was still strong—but it was nice not to have to be strong all the time.

They had to wait a couple minutes for the valet to bring the convertible around and Kate leaned over to brush her lips against his cheek.

He glanced at her with a pleased but surprised smile since he knew that public displays of affection weren't really her thing. "What was that for?"

She let her cheek rest against his shoulder for a moment. "No reason," she murmured. "I was just thinking that we seem to be making a tradition of going out on dates when one of us is depressed about something."

His fingers on her bare back tightened a little, his expression becoming soft, serious. "As long as we're still going out on dates, that's the most important thing to me."

She managed a faint smile. "Me too."

The valet returned in the convertible, interrupting the moment, but as Castle opened the car door for her, he bent and kissed her hair.

The short drive back to the hotel was silent, Castle leaving her to her thoughts, apparently sensing that she didn't feel like talking or even listening to him talk at the moment.

He didn't speak until they were back in the suite, turning to her with so much concern on his face it made her throat tight with emotion. "Do you want anything to drink, Kate? Wine, tea?"

She didn't particularly want anything but she recognized that he was asking because he felt helpless and offering a drink made him feel as if he were being of some use to her since he couldn't eradicate her grief over Royce entirely. "Some wine might be nice," she compromised. "I think I'm going to change, get ready for bed."

He nodded. "You should. You look exhausted."

She managed a weak but teasing smile. "Wow, Castle, you really know how to flatter a girl."

He winced. "Sorry."

"I'm only teasing, Castle," she said, patting his chest lightly. "I'll be out in a few minutes."

"I'll have Maurice bring up a bottle of wine."

Kate changed into leggings and a loose sleep shirt, reflecting as she hung up her dress that she would have to wear it again sometime on an evening when she and Castle would be more in the mood to appreciate it properly. She was guiltily aware that her change in mood had cut their date night short but she couldn't help it, the thought of Royce practically haunting her, sorrow and regret hanging over her.

She wished desperately, for about the millionth time in the last two days that she and Royce could have actually talked, made amends. Wished she could at least have had the chance to say goodbye. But no, as she knew all too well, a murder never allowed for those final goodbyes to be said.

On the thought, she was reminded of Royce's letter and she pulled it out of her bag, belatedly remembering that she had not actually finished reading the entire letter last night.

She read the entire letter through, even though she still remembered the earlier portions as if they'd been stamped onto her brain.

 _And now, there's just one more thing, kid. It's clear that you and Castle have something real. Hold on to it, fight for it. I don't expect it'll be easy; making yourself vulnerable to someone else never is. But take it from someone who didn't learn this until too late, putting the job ahead of your heart is a mistake. Risking our hearts is why we're alive. The last thing you want is to look back on your life and wonder, if only. You deserve more than that. You deserve the real thing and if what I saw is any indication, I think you and Castle have it. And I'm glad._

 _So be happy. And know that whatever else, whether we ever talk or meet again, I'm your friend and I'm proud of you._

 _Take care of yourself, kid._

 _Royce_

Kate let out a shaky breath.

She couldn't know what Royce had seen to convince him that she and Castle had the real thing and she wasn't sure why it even meant so much that Royce had written what he had, but somehow it did. She might have known already that what she and Castle had was very real and very precious, but it still mattered to know that Royce had known and approved. In spite of everything, some little corner of her still retained the old wish for Royce's approval. He had been her training officer, her mentor, a man she had respected and wanted to emulate. And in spite of all that had happened last fall, the emotions still lingered. So it mattered to know that her relationship with Castle had Royce's blessing, so to speak.

She felt as if she could finally, once and for all, lay the ghost of her old feelings for Royce to rest. She had loved Royce once, as much as she could have loved anyone while still guarding her heart so fiercely. But she loved Castle now, loved Castle more.

And she suddenly wanted to be with Castle again, wanted the warmth and reassurance and comfort of his presence.

She put the letter back in her bag and then returned to the front room of the suite to see that Castle had poured two glasses of wine and was idly flipping through one of the magazines that were on the coffee table.

He put the magazine away the moment she appeared and she joined him on the couch, curling up next to him, leaning against him as he put his arm around her shoulders, tucking her closely against him. She took a drink of wine and although she had agreed mostly to make Castle feel better, she found that it actually did rather help, the warmth from the rich wine as it slid down her throat pleasant. He slid his hand up and down her arm in a lazy, comforting caress and she relaxed further against him.

"I can't believe he's really gone," she murmured, not even trying to control the faint quaver in her voice. "I wish… I could have talked to him, wish I hadn't missed his call. I keep thinking… maybe I could have saved him if I'd only answered his call…"

"You shouldn't blame yourself," he sighed. "You can't know what would have happened and if what we found out today is any indication, I get the feeling Royce knew how big of trouble he was in and I think… I hope… he'd made his peace with it, with knowing that he was doing the right thing, making amends."

"He said… he was on a righteous path now. It sounds like he'd managed to get a reputation already as helping people who were in trouble but couldn't go to the police for whatever reason."

"Like Violet Young," Castle finished for her, slipping into his storytelling voice. "A gullible young actress desperate to make a name for herself. She meets our mastermind at a club. He needs a pretty girl to help him get the voice code. He tells Violet he's a producer, promises to make her famous if she helps him play a practical joke on a friend."

As always, she got caught up in the story, lulled into it by his voice, as she took up the reins of his theory-building. "She doesn't even realize that she's participating in a crime until afterwards. She can't call the cops so she contacts Royce."

"And then our Mr. McCauley finds out…"

"And Royce tries to change the game. He goes to New York. Home field advantage. Classic. Classic Royce," Kate murmured with a half-smile, suddenly remembering what Royce had once said to her, that being able to pick the battleground could win the battle before it even began. Not always possible, of course, in chasing after a suspect but sometimes, if a cop was smart enough, the cop could feint and try to lure a suspect into more advantageous territory and then the cop would have the advantage.

"I was so in awe of him, Castle," she admitted quietly with a reminiscent smile. "When I first met him, I just hung on his every word. And then later I realized he was just making up stories to mess with me." She paused, her smile fading in a fresh stab of grief. "I can't believe that I'm never going to see him again."

He pressed a kiss to her hair, his hand faltering slightly in its soothing, repetitive caress of her arm. "I'm sorry, Kate."

She blinked back tears as she caught his hand in hers and brought it to her lips to kiss his palm. After a moment, she shifted, sliding further down on the couch until she was lying down, her head pillowed on his thigh.

He tipped his head down to look at her, giving her one of his faint, tender smiles that existed mostly in his eyes and only barely touched his lips.

She had retained her grip on one of his hands but he moved the other to comb gentle fingers through her hair, the motions soft and oddly relaxing. She still wasn't sure exactly why it was so soothing when Castle ran his fingers through her hair like this but it occurred to her to wonder if it was because the last person to have ever brushed her hair for her had been her mother, a lifetime ago in the days when she'd been a little girl wearing pigtails. Or maybe, more prosaically, it was the simple intimacy of the touch, combined with the innocence of it because there was never anything sensual about it. She didn't know nor did she really care; all she knew was that she felt the lingering remnants of tension from the stress of the day draining out of her. They might not have found out the real identity of this Mr. McCauley yet but they had solid leads, knew what he'd plotted with the robbery from Kelvin North America. And at that moment, she couldn't doubt that they would manage to find Royce's killer. They would get justice for Royce and then he could be at peace.

Castle didn't say anything more, only continued with his tender, undemanding ministrations and that made it easier to talk, to share some of the memories that had been constantly bubbling up in her mind the last couple days.

"I almost got Royce shot just after we started working together," she admitted with a small, rueful laugh. Her smile faded, became absent. "I was so green when I got out of the Academy but I didn't even know it, too green to even know all that I didn't know about being a cop. I finished first in my class at the Academy…"

"That doesn't surprise me in the slightest," he commented mildly and she smiled briefly up at him. Castle never really doubted her ability to do anything and his faith in her was heart-warming.

"I'd pushed myself so hard for it that I already believed I knew how to be a real cop from the moment I got my badge." She paused, becoming thoughtful. "I recognize now that the Academy mostly taught us about paperwork and the basics of combat, both how to fight and how to shoot. But it focused so much on teaching us how to use our guns that they didn't really pay much attention to when or whether to use our guns."

"That's a judgment call and that sort of judgment usually takes experience and can't be taught."

"True, but there's still some value in theory, basic guidelines to follow, and the Academy sort of skimped on that part. So in my second or third week after I started working with Royce, we were chasing after a guy who'd just committed armed robbery and he ran into a dead end alley. I'd fallen behind by a few steps in the chase and so Royce cornered him first, seeing first thing that the guy was wildly nervous, a little unstable, waving his gun around so Royce was just trying to calm the guy down. But I didn't stop to notice any of that; I just ran right into the alley, pointed my gun, and yelled out just like they'd taught us in the Academy, 'freeze and put your hands up!'"

Castle chuckled softly and she allowed herself a small smile at the memory. She could see the humor in it now, although it had taken some time.

"The guy startled like a rabbit and his gun went off, missing Royce by a couple inches and then breaking a street lamp and the sound of the breaking glass distracted the guy enough so that Royce was able to tackle him."

"All's well that ends well?"

Kate didn't smile, still caught up in the memory of her own anxiety. "I thought Royce was going to rip me to shreds, figuratively speaking, since my stupidity had almost gotten him killed, but he didn't. He didn't even mention the incident in the report he submitted about it, only mentioning that the suspect had fired wildly before he'd been incapacitated but never mentioning what had startled the guy into firing. He'd have been justified; I know some rookies who dropped out of the force entirely after something like that because their training officers made them feel so bad. But all Royce ever said to me about it was 'don't do that again, kid' and he never mentioned it again, not even when I made other little mistakes which, of course, I did, although none of them had such potentially serious consequences. I guess he already knew me well enough to know that I'd be harder on myself for it than he ever could be."

"He must have known you pretty well."

"Yeah, he did," she agreed softly and then added, her voice lowering, "He knew about Dad and his… problem," she euphemistically phrased it since even now, after so many years, she still shied away from referring to her dad's alcoholism in so many words. It was too… clinical a word for what it had done to her father, to her, and she didn't like it for the way it brought back memories of the counseling she'd had. "Royce was with me the first time I had to… to arrest my dad for public intoxication and that was when I told him about… my mom. And Royce knew about the other times that I had to go get my dad from other precincts when he'd been picked up." Her voice trailed off, flinching a little at the painful memories. She remembered, too, although she didn't say that she'd been scared to look at Royce the day after she'd first arrested her dad, scared that she would see pity in his eyes the way she had in the eyes of the other uniforms in the other precincts when she'd gone to pick up her dad, but no, there had been no pity. Royce had never even mentioned her dad to her again, had only accepted it as part of her life but no more something to pity her about than the color of her eyes or her hair.

It belatedly occurred to Kate to be amazed at having shared the memories in the first place. She almost never spoke about the time when her dad had still been drowning, had never mentioned to anyone else the couple times she'd needed to arrest her own father or the other times when she'd received a call from another precinct to let her know her dad had been picked up. Royce had known because he'd seen it; Captain Montgomery knew out of necessity because he'd been her captain during the last few times she'd needed to leave to get her dad. Esposito and Ryan knew the basic outlines about her dad's issues but they didn't know about those incidents specifically because Captain Montgomery wouldn't have told them and Kate had never mentioned it.

And now she had told Castle. His hand had frozen in her hair at her words but now he resumed the soothing movements.

She looked up at him, a little nervous even now that she might see pity in his expression, that he would express sympathy (which might, oddly, feel even worse.) His eyes were clear and soft, filled with tenderness and love, but there was no pity.

"You know what I thought when I first met you?"

She shook her head in a small jerky motion, a little mesmerized by the intensity of the emotion on his face.

"That you were a mystery I was never gonna solve. And I wonder sometimes if I'll ever reach the limit of how much I'll be amazed by the depths of your strength, your heart—but every day I spend with you, everything I learn about you, just amazes me more."

Her throat seemed to have closed up, her heart melting in her chest. Oh, this man, this man who loved her so fiercely… This man who knew her so well with all her issues and her flaws but who still looked at her as if she were a miracle…

She had no words—how could any paltry words of hers compare to the profound beauty and wonder of what he had just said to her? But she pushed herself upright and then cupped his cheek with her hand before leaning in to kiss him, softly, lingeringly.

"Let's go to bed, Castle," she breathed against his lips.

She led him into the bedroom, holding his hand, and the moment the door was closed behind them, he was kissing her with slow, devastating thoroughness. She was only vaguely aware of falling back onto the bed and it seemed to her fuzzy mind that their clothes almost melted away beneath his sure touch.

She reached for him, her hands sliding around his bare shoulders, but he caught one hand in his, pressing a kiss into her palm and then flicking his tongue against the sensitive skin of her wrist just above her pulse point.

He kissed her lips, again. "Ssh, Kate. Just relax," he murmured against her lips. "Let me take care of you."

The words seeped into her mind, her heart, and she gave herself up to him with a complete trust she'd never felt for anyone else (and never would feel for anyone else) as he proceeded to make love to her not only as no one else ever had before but as he never had before. Made love to her with so much care and tenderness and restrained passion it made tears prick at her eyes.

Afterwards, she was a boneless puddle in the bed, sated, exhausted, feeling as if she were floating in the hazy sea of pleasure and love. She was only vaguely aware of him tracing a gentle hand along the curve of her cheek and then the soft brush of his lips against hers.

"Sleep, Kate."

"Mmm," she mumbled. "Love you."

She was asleep before he answered.

* * *

Kate drifted awake, blinking her somewhat bleary eyes open. Her eyes fell on the clock beside the bed and she shut her eyes again with a mental groan. In spite of how tired she was, her body was apparently firmly on Eastern time so she was awake even though the clock said it was only 4:51 a.m.

After a few minutes, Kate gave up on the futile attempt to fall back asleep. Her mind was already awake and she was almost never able to fall back asleep once she'd woken up in the mornings anyway.

Castle was spooned up behind her, his arm slung possessively around her waist. Moving slowly so as not to disturb him, Kate inched around in the circle of his embrace until she could see his face. There was just enough gray pre-dawn light filtering past the drawn curtains to make him visible and for a few minutes, Kate indulged in watching him sleep. Creepy staring, she heard his teasing voice in her head.

 _Such a cliché, Kate_ , _watching your beloved sleep_ , a voice in her head commented dryly. Kate felt a little sheepish about it and so she didn't often let herself study Castle like this—also because she knew that he would smirk and tease her rather unmercifully if he caught her at it, as he had once or twice—but this morning, well, it was ridiculously early and they hadn't had much sleep so she thought she was safe from the prospect of Castle waking. And after the last night, she was still feeling uncharacteristically soft, tender, about as far removed from her usual no-nonsense Detective Beckett self as she could be. She knew it was going to be another day of compartmentalizing, of shoving her grief over Royce aside so she could work, but for now, for these few minutes, she didn't have to be Detective Beckett, could just be Kate. Castle's Kate.

His face was half-smashed against the pillow, his lips slightly parted, as he slept soundly. Kate smiled to herself. He was drooling a little and it made him look even younger, more vulnerable, than he usually did when he slept. His hair was an unkempt mess, his face bristly and disheveled with morning stubble.

Oh, this man, this dear, generous man. _Her_ dear, generous man. His words from last night returned to her, replaying in her mind. It occurred to her that no less than him, she was the one who was amazed by the depths of _his_ heart, amazed and humbled by the unstinting generosity of his love.

She heard Royce's voice in her head. _It's clear that you and Castle have something real._ Yes, she knew they did. There were times she felt as if her love for Castle—and his for her—was the only real, solid truth of her entire life, the one thing she could depend on. Just as he was here for her now, had dropped everything to fly across the country with her on no notice, insisted on it even though she knew she could never have asked him to do such a thing for the sake of a man he'd only met once, a man to whom he'd owed nothing—and if that weren't enough, the man she'd loved before him.

 _He's not doing this for Royce, Kate, he's doing it for you_ , a voice inside her head reminded her.

On the thought—the reminder of Royce, Kate felt some of her Beckett-ness return with a renewed sense of determination. They didn't have much time to solve this case and after how angry Captain Montgomery had been, Kate didn't feel like testing his forbearance by staying out here for any longer than necessary. They might be able to get this one day's grace with the excuse of needing to wait for the long flight back and the time difference but anything beyond today would be asking for trouble. She would stay out here as long as she needed to, of course, but the sooner she could solve this case and return to the City, the better. She didn't want to be suspended after all.

She carefully edged out from under Castle's arm, practically holding her breath so she wouldn't disturb him. (Not that he would complain or blame her but just because she was awake by 5 a.m. was no reason for him to do so.) He twitched and mumbled her name but then he slept on and Kate let out the breath she'd been holding.

She used the shower in the other bedroom to avoid waking Castle. They might not need the extra bed but it occurred to her that having the other bedroom was proving surprisingly useful, all things considered.

The front room of the suite had a standard coffee machine and she made a pot of coffee once she was dressed before deciding she might as well be productive and try to use this time to get to the bottom of the heist.

One phone call later, she even had a white board to work on. (She was impressed. So this was what service was like at the really high-end hotels.)

Castle emerged from the bedroom a little before 7:30 and she felt her heart soften at the sight of him, looking rather like a large, rumpled teddy bear in the hotel robe he had shrugged into.

"Morning, Castle."

He blinked in some surprise at the whiteboard. "Wow. Did you pack a murder board?"

She smirked. "Yes, Castle, my bag can magically expand to fit a white board," she quipped sarcastically. "I'm like Mary Poppins."

"'Practically perfect in every way?' I knew that already."

She had to laugh but couldn't quite help her flush. "Flattery, Castle. You of all people know I'm far from being perfect."

He grinned at her. "Oh, I wouldn't say that. I think the fact that you once dressed up like Gene Simmons for Halloween makes you pretty close to the perfect woman."

"That's your criteria for the perfect woman?" she laughed.

He shrugged. "Well, it's not the only thing on the list but it's one of them."

She rolled her eyes at this piece of inanity but didn't resist as he perched on the arm of the sofa and then tugged her in to sit next to him, leaning over to kiss her hair and then nuzzle her ear. "Mm, morning, gorgeous," he murmured.

She bit her lip to keep from smiling. "Do you want to hear what I've figured out about the heist from Kelvin North America?"

He heaved a put-upon sigh but loosened his arm from around her waist. "Yes, of course, go ahead."

She patted his hand resting on her waist and then started to walk him through her thought process, loving the way he caught on so quickly. They did work together well. He made her a better cop. (He made her a better person.)

* * *

Castle had barely taken his hot, dark gaze off her from the moment she'd stepped out of the pool; she'd been conscious of it even as she acted as bait to lure Ganz into giving something up, the awareness that Castle was watching making it easier to use all the seductive wiles at her disposal even if Castle wasn't the ostensible target of said wiles.

And it had worked, at least insofar as it had distracted Ganz for just long enough to allow Castle to take a picture of his recent call list—even though she still smarted at being called green by Ganz. Green! She hadn't been legitimately 'green' at any time in the last 7 years!

Even after she had pulled on an oversized t-shirt over the swimsuit (courtesy of Maurice at the hotel and Kate had felt rather like Julia Roberts in _Pretty Woman_ when she'd asked Maurice to send up a selection of swimsuits for her to choose from), Castle's expression hadn't changed. Had made her feel as if the shirt was entirely transparent or nonexistent for the way his eyes were practically burning her through it. But then again, to Castle, it might as well have been transparent, for all intents and purposes, since he knew exactly what her body looked like beneath the shirt and the swimsuit.

Kate attempted to stave off her buzzing awareness of Castle's gaze and all that it promised—she had a job to do. They were in the middle of a case. They didn't have time to be distracted. And she was perfectly capable of resisting Castle. Really, she was!

She hurried into the suite, aware that there were goose bumps on her bare legs. The pareo might cover her legs to an extent but it didn't provide warmth. And it might be plenty warm outside but the hotel interior was well air-conditioned and after the dip in the pool, with her hair still wet, she was more easily chilled, not helped by the fact that the t-shirt was not made for warmth of any sort.

She heard the suite door close and then Castle caught her wrist and tugged her back into his arms, kissing her hard and forcefully. She tried—she did—to resist but her arms went up around his neck of their own volition as she arched against him.

His hands made quick work of undoing the knot on the pareo and then slid under her shirt and broke off the kiss only to lift the shirt up over her head, discarding it on the floor, and then he paused to give her body in the swimsuit a long, thorough once-over.

"Castle…"

She wasn't sure whether she meant to voice a protest or encouragement but either way, the words were lost as he kissed her again and by the time his lips moved on down the line of her chin and the curve of her neck, leaving a trail of hot, damp kisses, she was finding it hard to remember why she should resist.

Her head fell back on a breathless moan, allowing him greater access. And _ooh_ , she needed to— _ooh god_ —call the Detective—her fuzzy brain couldn't quite remember the other detective's name at the moment.

His so-talented hands slid up her back, taking full advantage of every patch of bare skin left bare by the cut-outs on the suit. His lips found the pulse point in her neck and he paused there to kiss and suck lightly and then graze the sensitive skin ever so lightly with his teeth and she cried out.

She became fuzzily aware that his hands had lifted to the neck of the suit, swiftly tugging undone the knot of the halter top and she felt the suit immediately sag away from her body and then fall away entirely, helped along by his hands.

With the last remnants of coherence she could muster, she tried frantically to remember why they really shouldn't do this now. "Castle," she gasped, biting back another moan at another caress of his knowledgeable hands, "oh—we need… we need to call that detective," she panted.

"This first," he grunted against her skin.

Her legs parted involuntarily at the slide of his hand between them— _oh god._

"This first," she agreed on a breathless gasp. And gave up the futile attempt to resist him as she pulled him into the shower with her.

* * *

In spite of the unplanned (but oh so good) interlude in the shower, they managed to get Ganz at the drop-off point for the stolen haul of bullets from Kelvin North America.

She had her gun trained at Ganz's head and a mental image of Royce's body with the fatal hole in his forehead flashed through her mind. She wanted to kill Ganz, wanted to put a bullet through his brain the same way he had with Royce. It played through her mind—the tightening of her finger on the trigger, the shot, Ganz falling dead. Poetic justice, to kill Ganz the same way he had killed Royce.

She hesitated, feeling the insidious tug of temptation, of vengeance. Let justice be done—justice for Royce.

But then she heard a voice cut through the strange buzzing in her head— _his_ voice. "Kate!"

And her head cleared, her finger loosening on the trigger. "Russell Ganz, you are under arrest for the murder of Michael Royce."

She remembered who and what she was. She was Detective Kate Beckett. And Richard Castle believed in her.

She turned away from Ganz as the LA cops swarmed up, checking the safety on her gun before tucking it into the waistband of her jeans.

Castle fell into step beside her. "Are you okay?" he asked quietly, his hand briefly touching her back in as much of a caress as he would give her when there were so many people around them.

She turned to him, managing a faint but real smile for him. "Yeah, I'm fine," she answered softly. She was now—thanks to him.

He returned her smile and together, they walked along the sand until they could make their way back onto the pier.

Detective Seeger had driven them over in his squad car. This wasn't the time for the convertible. They waited for him beside the car since he was obviously going to be delayed with directing the uniforms and making arrangements for Ganz to get sent to the hospital to deal with the bullet in his leg while his arrest was processed.

"You did it, Beckett," Castle said finally.

She nudged his arm lightly with hers and gave him a sideways smile. " _We_ did it, Castle."

"We did it," he repeated.

"With the boys' help," she added somewhat belatedly.

"Oh, hey, speaking of the boys, shouldn't you call them up, let them know it's over?"

"You're right, I should."

By the time she had finished giving Espo a brief run-down of what had happened, Seeger had returned.

They needed to go to Seeger's precinct to give an official statement before Seeger drove them back to the hotel.

Back in the suite, they talked briefly with Seeger to coordinate the cooperation between the NYPD and LAPD going forward to bring the cases against Maniss and Ganz, respectively. Listening to Seeger, Kate was rather grudgingly aware of a growing respect for his brisk competence and could tell from Castle's expression that he thought the same thing, as evidenced by the fact that before leaving, Castle once again pressed Seeger to take one of the complimentary robes and succeeded this time. (Only Castle.)

Castle had booked tickets on a red-eye flight back to New York while she had been giving her official statement at the station so they needed to leave the hotel soon after Seeger did.

"How close did you come? With Ganz?" Castle asked, breaking the silence as they finished packing up their bags.

She paused. "Close enough," she answered briefly. Closer than she ever had before. Only to be stopped by the sound of her name being called by a good man, this good man who believed in her so.

"You did the right thing. He would be proud of you." And the expression on his face added, _I'm proud of you too._

She felt tears pricking at the back of her eyes. _I'm as proud of you now as I ever was._ She managed a somewhat shaky smile as she picked up her bag. "Let's go home, Castle."

They were seated in first class for the flight back (of course). He was so good to her, and his generosity was the least of it.

She lifted her hand to touch his cheek, getting his attention. "Castle?"

"Hmm?"

"Thank you. I don't think I could have done this without you." Which was true and she wasn't even talking about the real help he'd given her to solve the case.

He gave her a faint smile, although his eyes were serious. "Yes, you could have, but you wouldn't have had as much fun."

"That sounds like the story of our lives," she responded with somewhat forced lightness.

He smirked a little. "Yeah, it kind of does, doesn't it?"

"Royce wrote in his letter that he could see that we had something real," she told him before she'd consciously realized she was going to do so.

Surprise flared in his eyes before his expression softened. "Something real," he repeated.

She smiled softly into his eyes as she cupped his cheek with her hand, her thumb lightly tracing his lower lip. "And he was right."

His eyes crinkled a little at the corners in the beginnings of a smile. "I knew that already."

Smug, adorable man. She opened her mouth to respond but was overtaken by a yawn before she could.

Castle huffed a soft laugh and slid his arm around her shoulders, gently pulling her in until she was leaning against him, her head resting against his shoulder. "Get some sleep, Kate. You were up early this morning and it's been a long day."

She shifted, resettling against him more comfortably. "Mm'kay," she murmured equably because he was, of course, right that she was tired. "You sleep too."

"I will."

He rested his head against hers as she reached up to tug his arm more firmly around her shoulders. She felt him relax on a sigh and let her eyes close.

She would need to make funeral arrangements for Royce, she reflected rather muzzily, since she knew he had no real family. She would worry about it later, tomorrow.

And whatever else, she had Castle to help her. So she would be fine. She had Castle; she wasn't alone.

On the thought, she slid into sleep as the plane carried them homeward.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: I plead guilty to the fact that the little insert involving the swimsuit scene is entirely gratuitous and serves no purpose whatsoever to advance Castle and Beckett's relationship. Um, sorry?_

 _I hope this chapter, with the new version of the couch scene and Royce's letter, satisfied._

 _As always, thank you to all readers and reviewers, especially to the guests whom I can't thank directly._


	30. Chapter 29: Pretty Dead 1

Author's Note: The first of two chapters based on "Pretty Dead." As usual, some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 29_

It was a little odd just how much Castle had come to love mornings with Beckett—or not odd at all since he loved just about everything that came with living with Beckett. But mornings with her had become one of his private joys.

He didn't think he could really explain to anyone just why he enjoyed these mornings so much since for the most part, he and Beckett never talked much in the mornings. Beckett was not, of course, given to chatter at the best of times but in the mornings, especially, she was even less inclined to idle talk. He'd learned that before she'd had her first cup of coffee, she was basically monosyllabic, at best, and practically mute, at worst. It took the second cup of coffee before she became more herself, more of her Detective Beckett snap returning to her. By now, Castle could predict almost to the minute when she would be open to conversation in the mornings according to the amount of coffee left in her second cup. It varied depending on how tired she was on any given morning but usually by the time she'd finished half of that second cup, she would respond with more than just one-word answers if he addressed her.

Beckett was much more of a morning person than he was, certainly an earlier riser than she was, after years of putting in long hours at the precinct. So it worked out perfectly in that Beckett woke up first and made the coffee and by the time he himself had woken up and finished his morning ablutions, she was usually starting on her second cup of coffee.

But generally, no matter Beckett's coffee level, they didn't talk much in the mornings (for once in their day). He was less inclined to talk in the mornings too as his brain was still waking up but beyond that, he found he liked being silent in Beckett's company. It was weirdly soothing and invigorating at the same time just to be with her.

So they'd settled into a routine for weekday mornings—at least the weekday mornings when she didn't leave early to workout in the precinct gym, as she usually did twice a week—of her reading the newspaper and then passing the finished sections to him, which he usually skimmed while sipping his coffee. Sometimes he jotted down ideas that he'd woken up with or idly browsed the internet as he ate breakfast. They would exchange the occasional comment on what was in the paper or what he saw online but for the most part, they drank their coffees and ate their breakfasts in an easy silence.

This morning was no different. Castle had finished his coffee and was now eating cereal as he idly skimmed the sports section. Beside him, Beckett was nibbling at a piece of toast and sipping her second cup of coffee while engrossed in a front-page story.

The cozy silence was abruptly broken by the sound of Alexis's voice as she came down the stairs, talking intensely into her phone. "Illinois? That's like 500 miles from Manhattan. No, I know Northwestern is closer than Stanford; I'm just saying that's not where you want to go!"

She must be talking to Ashley but why was she talking to him at this hour of the morning when she'd be seeing him in school in less than an hour? Alexis and Ashley might talk every day (which he still didn't really understand) but usually their marathon phone calls were reserved for the evenings.

"Alexis?"

"Hold on, Ash, my dad's talking to me." She turned away from her phone. "What?"

"Don't you have school?" he asked, the rather inane question a cover for what he really wanted to ask, which was why she was talking to Ashley now. She wouldn't appreciate that question.

Alexis rolled her eyes in patented Beckett-fashion and he gave Beckett a look of mock dismay. "You've corrupted her," he whispered quietly. "She rolled her eyes at me, just like you do."

Beckett only smirked and nudged him with her elbow.

"Yes," Alexis answered him, a note of impatience entering her voice, before returning to her call. "Look, Ash, I know you. And I think you need to get away from home. I mean, we all need to get away from home."

What? "Hey!" he protested.

"I gotta go. We'll talk about this later. Love you too. Bye."

Castle tried not to scowl at how easily the 'love you too' slipped from Alexis's lips. He hadn't known Alexis said those words to Ashley so often and he didn't like hearing his daughter declaring her love for her boyfriend. Ugh.

He pulled his mind to a more immediate concern as Alexis approached. "We all need to get away from home?" he repeated.

"No. I should never leave," Alexis returned with light sarcasm. "We can be the father-daughter version of _Grey Gardens_."

He didn't laugh, only studied her, noting the shadows under her eyes, the strain in her expression. (One thing about Alexis's fair skin was that the telltale signs of a sleepless night were very obvious.) "You look like you didn't get any sleep."

She sighed. "I didn't. Ashley got his college acceptances. He got in everywhere."

"That's great," Beckett commented. "It must be a huge relief for him. I know you and he have been worrying over it."

Alexis gave them both a look.

"That's not great?" Castle guessed, a little confused.

Alexis sighed again, moving around the island to head to the fridge. "I looked up statistics for high school sweethearts, when one of them goes to college out of state and the other stays in high school. The odds are not in our favor." She opened the fridge to take out a mixed-fruit smoothie and then returned, facing him and Beckett over the island, while her fingers fiddled with the seal of the smoothie bottle. "I mean, I want him to go where he wants but I don't want him to leave and he doesn't want to leave, but I don't want him to resent me for not going where he wants. And I don't know what to do."

Beside him, Beckett straightened up as she reached out to pat Alexis's hand. "Statistics aren't everything, Alexis. I know one of my high school friends managed a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend at the time when he went off to college."

"Right," he chimed in. "It's not impossible. Just do what I do. Look at the odds as a challenge." Castle still remembered the college professor who had told him that the odds of getting a novel published while in college were so low as to make winning the lottery seem like a sure thing in comparison so he should just give up the idea. But he'd never been good at doing what other people told him to do, especially when it went against his own inclinations, so he'd ignored the professor and sent the draft of _In a Hail of Bullets_ out to a slew of publishers. He'd been rejected (of course) but by then, his stubbornness was fully engaged and he'd tried again, picking out some lesser-known, less-established publishing companies, including a small one called Black Pawn. And the rest, as they say, was history.

Alexis did not look impressed by this philosophy. "Says the man who always loses in Vegas."

Okay, so she had a point. Poker, he could play with the best of them, but pure games of chance—well, luck never seemed to be on his side there. He made a small face. "Well, relationships are hard."

"But I think you'll manage to figure it out," Beckett finished for him, only to have her words almost cut off by the ringing of her phone. She turned away to answer it. "Beckett."

He gave Alexis a small, reassuring smile, reaching out to tuck a strand of red hair behind her ear. "You'll figure it out," he repeated. "And you know Beckett and I are both here if you want to talk about it." It might have been the first time he had reassured Alexis in such a way by referring to someone else as well as himself, he realized with an odd sensation in his chest. _Beckett and I._ It had slipped out so naturally and of course, it was a natural thing to say now.

Alexis's expression brightened a little. "I know, Dad."

He touched his fingers lightly to Alexis's cheek. "Good. Now, don't you need to be getting ready to leave for school?"

"Yes, Dad."

He knew Alexis was feeling more like herself because her tone was once more her usual tone of affectionate exasperation for when he gave her an unnecessary reminder. He felt a spurt of warmth in his chest. His little girl so grown up.

"And don't you need to be getting ready to leave for a murder?" she added, parroting his question.

He gave her a mock narrow-eyed look. "Cheeky daughter."

She only smiled as Beckett ended the call and turned back to them. "We have a new case, Castle," she said, unnecessarily. "Alexis, you'll be all right?"

He loved Beckett for asking that.

"I'll be fine, Kate. I need to leave for school in a few minutes anyway."

"Okay. Come on, Castle." Beckett squeezed Alexis's arm and then whirled around, heading to his office to retrieve her gun, while he hastily put their breakfast dishes into the sink and hurriedly shrugged into his jacket.

He kissed Alexis's hair. "We'll see you later, okay, sweetie?"

Alexis gave him a faint imitation of her usual teasing smile. "Have fun with the murder, Dad."

He made an exaggerated show of glancing around before whispering, "Don't let Beckett hear you say that."

"Too late, Castle," Beckett's voice sounded from just a couple feet away and he gave a theatrical start.

"How do you walk so quietly in those heels?" he demanded in mock disgruntlement. "Are they some special stealth variety? I should start making you wear tap shoes around the loft so you can't sneak up on me."

Both Beckett and Alexis rolled their eyes. Oh god, Beckett's influence really had rubbed off on Alexis. Alexis had never really rolled her eyes at him before she'd started spending so much time with Beckett.

"Come on, Castle, we need to go to work. Stop being silly."

"I've been trying to make Dad stop being silly for years now. I think he's hopeless," Alexis returned.

He threw up his hands and pretended to stalk off towards the door. "Well, if you're both going to make fun of me, I'll just go solve this murder by myself."

And he was rewarded by what had to be his favorite sound in the entire world, the neat harmony of his partner and his daughter both laughing.

He waved a hand at Alexis as he and Beckett left and his last view of Alexis before the door closed was of her beginning to gather up her things for school.

Beckett tossed him a smile. "Nice job, Castle. You managed to distract Alexis and make her laugh."

He grinned at her. Of course she'd figured out what he was doing. "So, where's the crime scene, Beckett?"

"You're gonna love this one, Castle. The murder scene is the theater of the VB Tower Hotel."

He blinked. "Wait, Victor Baron's place? Tell me it's not the Baron, is it?" That would be a huge loss for all reality shows.

"No, but you won't be disappointed. This one's right up your alley."

"Why's that?"

"Because our victim is a contestant."

Ooh, juicy. "Death of a beauty queen. Scandalous."

"Did you just come up with the title for your next book?" she teased.

"Nah, too close to _Death of a Prom Queen_."

"Oh well, can't have everything," she said with mock resignation.

"Anyway, I'm a little busy right now with another series you might have heard of about a detective named Nikki Heat," he quipped.

She pretended to think about it. "Hmm. Nope, doesn't ring a bell."

"Haha, very funny, Beckett."

She laughed. "You walked right into that one, Castle."

He huffed but then they were pulling up in the parking lot behind the VB Tower and he knew Beckett too well to keep up with the joking. She was in full Detective Beckett mode as they strode into the theater and were met with Ryan who gave them the brief rundown on the discovery of Amber Middleberry's body.

* * *

After being severely disillusioned over Bobby Stark being a perverted creep, in spite of playing such a great dad on TV (okay, so Castle might have fallen into the trap of assuming that an actor was the same as the character he played—rookie mistake), Castle and Beckett made it back to the loft after a quick takeout dinner in the precinct. There wasn't much to do once Beckett had set uniforms to look for Amber's missing violin that would hopefully give them more solid evidence to tie Stark to the murder.

"Hello, Mother. I see you've already started your nightly intake of wine," he greeted his mother as he and Beckett walked in.

"Ah, good evening, darlings," his mother looked up from the magazine she'd been paging through, waving a glass of wine in greeting.

"Hi, Martha."

Beckett vanished into the office to lock up her gun while he went into the kitchen to pour two more glasses of wine for himself and for Beckett.

"So what's this new case of yours about?" his mother asked as he joined her, glasses in hand.

"You'll enjoy this one," he told her. "The victim is a contestant in Victor Baron's Miss All-America pageant." He gave her a quick couple sentence summary of what they knew about Amber Middleberry so far.

His mother got a reminiscent smile. "A beauty pageant. Oh, that takes me back."

He blinked. Did she mean… "Wait, you were a beauty queen? You, Mother?"

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. "Don't act so shocked, Richard. I was quite a looker back in my day, you know."

"Yeah, really, Castle. Don't be mean," he heard Beckett's voice say as she appeared from his office, having changed into more comfortable clothes.

He held out the glass of wine for her, which she accepted with a smile as she sat down beside him.

"You were a beauty queen, Martha? Do you still have any pictures of that?"

His mother laughed. "You know, I think I might. Richard, where did you put that box of my old stuff, the things I refused to throw out and didn't want to put into storage?"

He had to think about it. His mother moving into the loft almost four years ago now had been a bit insane—predictably so—from the time she'd shown up on the doorstep, her face tear-stained as she admitted that all her savings were gone, her account cleaned out, and her latest boyfriend—the rat-bastard—gone with them. It had taken a couple trips to clean out the apartment she could no longer afford and in the rush, a lot of his mother's things had ended up being tossed into random boxes and put into storage. "I think it's in the upstairs hall closet. I'll get it."

"Thank you, Richard."

He put his glass of wine down. "I'll be right back."

"There should be a shoebox full of old pictures in it," his mother called after him.

"I'll find it," he tossed over his shoulder and as he headed upstairs, he heard Beckett asking his mother to tell her more about her beauty pageant days.

Better Beckett than him. He could think of better things to do than listen to another of his mother's exaggerated, overly dramatic stories, but Beckett for reasons that escaped him (except that clearly Beckett was a nicer person than he was) was usually a very willing audience for Martha Rodgers's one-woman show.

He wondered sometimes how much of that was due to Johanna Beckett's death. Beckett had learned far too early how precious it was to have a mother and as much as his mother irritated him at times, Beckett's presence in his life was a salutary reminder to him to be more thankful for his mother's presence in his life, as melodramatic and occasionally overbearing as she could be. Yet another reason to be thankful to have Beckett in his life.

He found the box of his mother's things, shoved into the back corner of the upstairs hall closet and quickly rifled through it—why had his mother insisted on keeping a fluorescent green, old feather boa?—to find a shoebox at the bottom which, when he peered into it, did contain old photographs. Very old photographs that weren't even black and white but had gone brown with age.

He pushed himself to his feet, grimacing a little at the way his knees popped. Kneeling on a hard wooden floor hadn't done him any favors.

He made his way back downstairs to hear Beckett laughing, no doubt at one of his mother's zany (and, he was sure, half-invented) stories.

They both looked up at him and damn, if his silly heart didn't positively flip a little at the sight of Beckett's smile. Again. Still. (Even after all this time, the sight of her wide, bright smile made his heart stutter in his chest. He thought it always would.)

"I found it," he announced unnecessarily.

Beckett gave him an amused little smirk. "We have eyes, Castle."

He narrowed his eyes at her as he resumed his seat and handed the box to his mother.

"Oh, beauty pageant intrigue. Some things never change," his mother commented as she began going through the pictures. "Ah, here it is."

She pulled out an old, old photograph of three bikini-clad young women, of whom the one on the right was his mother, looking even younger than his youngest memories of her.

"Would you look at that," he commented, laughing softly.

"You were beautiful, Martha," Beckett told his mother. "When was this?"

"Oh, ages ago, a couple years before Richard was born."

He looked up at his mother. "I didn't know you competed."

"Well, that's because I didn't win," his mother explained airily. "But I will tell you, the women I competed against, just as cutthroat as they are now."

He could imagine. "What was your talent?"

"The way I wore a sweater," his mother preened a little, making a theatrical pose.

He and Beckett both laughed.

"The 'talents' in the old beauty pageants are so much fun. I think it's interesting how they've changed over the years," Beckett commented. "Debbie Winokur's talent was juggling."

Their conversation was interrupted as the front door opened and Alexis walked in.

They all turned to greet her but Castle's smile froze on his face as he got a look at Alexis's face. She looked… rather shell-shocked, distraught, and he thought he could see the trace of tears on her face. His heart clenched.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Beckett shifted over on the couch and Alexis sat down heavily in the new space between him and Beckett.

"Ashley made his decision," Alexis told them dully.

Oh dear. And that had made Alexis this upset. He exchanged worried glances with Beckett.

"Stanford?" Beckett guessed gently.

"No. He decided to go to school here in New York," Alexis answered, her voice not sounding like herself.

So Ashley had decided to stay here. Which was what Alexis wanted. "What's not good about that?" he asked tentatively.

A tremor passed over Alexis's expression. "Stanford was his dream. I don't want to stand in the way of that. He'll just end up hating me for it and this could be the most important decision of his life." Her voice quavered a little before she went on, "So I made a decision too. I broke up with him." She what? He gaped at her.

At that, all of Alexis's tremulous composure gave way as she started to cry, burying her face in his shoulder while he wrapped his arms around her, his surprise drowned out in his worry.

He hated, absolutely hated, seeing Alexis cry. He'd decided a long time ago that seeing Alexis cry was the worst possible torture. He would rather have his lungs extracted from his body with an ice cream scoop than see Alexis cry.

"Oh, baby," his mother murmured, leaning forward to squeeze one of Alexis's hands in both of her own. "It'll be okay."

Alexis sniffled but didn't respond. He only tightened his arms around her, pressing his lips to her hair. Damn it. He hated how helpless he felt. What could he say? How could he make things better for her? Everything in him wanted to make his daughter's tears go away but what could he do? This wasn't the sort of situation where he could charge in and beat the living daylights out of whoever had hurt his little girl.

He wasn't sure he agreed with Alexis's decision, preemptively breaking up with Ashley, but Alexis's tears overshadowed everything else.

He shot Beckett a desperate, beseeching look.

She slipped a rather tentative arm around Alexis. "It's okay to cry, Alexis," she murmured. "I know it hurts."

Alexis stirred and to Castle's utter shock, for the first time in Alexis's life, she turned away from him when she was upset, moving more fully into Beckett's embrace, just as if… as if Kate—she was definitely all Kate now—were her mother, the sort of mother she'd never had.

A little niggle of something that he refused to admit might be jealousy went through him—Alexis had never, ever turned to anyone else for comfort when she was crying. Even if for most of her life, that had been because he was the only one there but still.

Kate looked a little startled but then she lifted a hand to stroke Alexis's hair soothingly, awkwardly and uncertainly at first but with growing ease, as Alexis cried on Kate's shoulder. Kate was not the most physically demonstrative of people, although she had proven to be more given to affectionate touches than he had ever expected at least with him, but it still didn't really come that naturally to her with anyone else. So, while she and Alexis hugged on occasion, their hugs were always initiated by Alexis.

He glanced at his mother wondering what she was making of this, to see that she was watching Kate and Alexis with a soft, almost teary-eyed expression. His mother looked up and met his eyes and nodded approvingly and he could tell his mother was saying that this was a good thing. Which, of course, it was. The fact that his daughter and the woman he hoped—planned—to marry were so close could only be a good thing. But it didn't mean he was entirely thrilled that he was no longer the one Alexis turned to for comfort.

Alexis sniffled a little and after a moment, stirred, pulling away a little. "Sorry, Kate," she mumbled. "I didn't mean to cry all over you."

"It's okay, Alexis," Kate said gently. "Why don't you go up and change into your pajamas? We'll camp out, watch silly movies, and eat way too much junk food."

That suggestion got a faint ghost of a smile from Alexis. Wow. Kate was magic. And he felt the little, unworthy twinge of something like jealousy vanish once and for all and knew it would never be back. His love for his daughter easily outweighed anything else and anyone who could make Alexis smile when she was this upset would have his full support. And finally, it appeared that the one thing he had always, always wanted Alexis to have—a real mother, with all that entailed—was becoming a reality. He might not be entirely used to it yet but he would get used to it. It was what he wanted.

And oh, how he loved Kate Beckett. He'd thought that he loved her a year ago. Now—now, he knew, that even then, as she had once told him, he'd had no idea.

Alexis sniffed and nodded. "Okay." She stood up and his mother immediately put her arm around her and shepherded Alexis upstairs.

Castle stared at Kate. "You are amazing," he blurted out.

She smiled slightly but shook her head a little in automatic demurral. "I was a teenage girl once too." She stood up. "Come on, Castle, help me get set up for a breakup night."

"A breakup night?" he repeated as he stood.

"Yes." She paused, faltering for just a moment before she went on, more quietly, "It's what my mom did for me when I came home crying with my first broken heart."

"Your first crush?" he asked, cautiously, sternly keeping all eager curiosity out of his voice. He knew better than to seem like he was prying or pushing. Even now, Kate shared stories about her mother as if she were a miser parting with precious jewels and if he seemed too eager, seemed to pressure her into telling, she still tended to evade, or at worst, clam up. Still a little skittish, his Kate, when it came to telling stories about her mom. So he regarded every story about Johanna Beckett in the light of a gift.

It was why, in spite of his insatiable curiosity about all things Beckett, he tried to skirt around questions that seemed to go too close to the subject of her mom and for that matter, generally didn't pester Kate with questions about her past anyway.

Her expression softened into a rather rueful, reminiscent smile. "I was 14. His name was Robbie and he was a grade older. He'd kissed me a couple times and I thought I was in love the way only a 14-year-old girl could think. And then I caught him kissing another girl in his own grade." She made a self-deprecating face. "I cried basically the entire way home that day. I barricaded myself up in my room but when my mom got home that day, she came in and made me tell her what happened and she said it called for a breakup night."

"And you watched movies and ate junk food?"

"Yeah, we did. We even banished my poor dad," Kate added with a little laugh.

"Poor Jim."

"We gave him some food and he just had to eat dinner alone in my parents' study. It was okay because he said he had work to do anyway."

"Still."

"You can commiserate with my dad later, Castle. Get out all the junk food we have and stuff to make ice cream sundaes."

"Yes, ma'am." But before he started following her instructions, he paused to pull Kate into his arms and kiss her. "Thank you."

"I'm doing this for Alexis, not you," she said but rather belied the words by kissing his chin quickly before pulling away.

He quickly emptied the cabinets of chips and cookies and then took out ice cream, every flavor they had, along with chocolate syrup, nuts, marshmallows, anything that could work as an ice cream topping.

Alexis returned in her pajamas and Castle could immediately see, his gut twisting, that she'd shed some more tears, her eyelids swollen. He went straight to her and wrapped his arms around her, remembering the way she'd told him a couple weeks ago that his hugs always helped.

While he had been setting up a world-class ice cream sundae bar on the kitchen island, Kate had in the meantime piled blankets on the couch and pulled out a selection of DVD's from the shelf. She returned to him and Alexis, resting a hand on Alexis's back.

"What kind of ice cream do you want, Alexis?" she asked gently.

Alexis sniffled, swiped at her damp cheeks, but she managed a watery sort of smile for Kate as she pulled away. "Chocolate, of course. What other kind is there?"

Castle kissed Alexis's cheek. "That's my girl."

He kept his arm around her as he accompanied her to the island and they each made an ice cream sundae for themselves. And he was glad to note that the easy (and happier) task of making the sundae appeared to distract Alexis a little.

Ice cream sundaes made, Kate had Alexis choose a movie to watch and his daughter—she really was his daughter—picked out the old animated Disney classic "The Great Mouse Detective" making Kate laugh and throw him a look. "You've trained her well, Castle."

"She's a chip off the old block," he declared proudly.

"I wouldn't say that, Castle. I'd say she's a big improvement on the old block," Kate quipped.

And for once, he couldn't even pretend dismay at Kate's teasing because Alexis gave a real smile of amusement as she turned to Kate. "Thank you, Kate."

He pretended to bridle in disgruntlement but couldn't keep it up and only gave Kate a mock pleading look. "At least don't banish me the way you banished your dad when you were a teenager and having a breakup night."

Kate smirked. "You can stay for now, Castle, and be our errand boy when we want more food so we don't need to get up."

"Errand boy!" he protested. "It's errand _man_ , thank you very much."

Alexis looked over at him with something approaching her usual teasing smile. "No, I think errand boy suits you better, Dad."

"It's not fair that you both gang up on me, you know."

Kate grinned at him. "Well, errand boy, if you want to be helpful, why don't you set up a blanket fort for us? I know you know how." (Of course she knew. He had once spent about 20 minutes explaining to her his theories about blanket-fort building, compiled after years of practice when Alexis had been growing up. Kate had rolled her eyes and pretended not to be listening but he should have known she had and was now taking advantage of it.)

He set up a blanket fort, the simplest kind, just off the couch.

And then Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD, crawled inside the blanket fort with his daughter and him and they settled in to watch the movie, while eating their ice cream sundaes.

If anyone had told him this would happen two years ago, he wouldn't have believed it in a million years, not of straitlaced, prickly Detective Beckett but she was Kate now and she loved his daughter and to cheer his daughter up…

She was amazing. So many different facets of her. The driven, intense, brilliant detective and the loving, compassionate, kind woman. And this extraordinary, gorgeous, clever woman loved _him_.

He'd never loved her more. Love. It seemed too weak a word, so small to describe the magnitude and depth of what he felt. He didn't know how much of his thoughts showed on his face but Kate glanced over at him, their eyes meeting, and then she flushed, her lashes momentarily lowering to hide her eyes, before she looked back up at him and smiled. And oh, he could see everything he'd ever wanted in her eyes right then.

He wanted to marry her. He'd known it before, of course, but somehow, at that moment, it felt profound. He'd thought before that aside from Alexis, Kate was the best thing that had ever happened to him but it occurred to him that Kate was also the best thing that had ever happened to his _family_ too. Witness how she'd come up with this plan to comfort Alexis, who was smiling now as she watched the movie.

He slipped his arm around Alexis's shoulders, bringing her in against him, and Alexis nestled her head against his shoulder much as she'd used to do when she was younger. He rested his cheek against Alexis's hair and settled in to watch the rest of the story of how Basil, the mouse detective, defeated the criminal mastermind, Ratigan.

By the time the movie ended, Alexis was yawning, exhausted from emotion and her sleepless night last night.

Kate and Castle exchanged looks over Alexis's head and by unspoken agreement, Castle helped Alexis out from the blanket fort and then accompanied her upstairs while Kate started cleaning up.

He hovered in the hallway while Alexis completed her nightly routine and was reminded of the years when Alexis had been tiny, when she'd needed to stand on a small stool in order to spit into the sink after brushing her teeth. He felt a sharp pang. Oh, those days when Alexis had been so small, when he had accompanied her everywhere, done everything with her pretty much. She'd been his favorite playmate, his friend, his entire world. Just as he had been her best friend, her hero. And as proud of her as he was, as much as he was amazed at the wonderful adult she was growing up to be, he missed those old days. When had she grown up enough to have a serious boyfriend and then to be breaking up with him not over some silly fight but because she wanted him to make the right decision about where to go to college?

He waited until Alexis had crawled into bed and then moved inside the room to drop a kiss on her forehead. "Good night, pumpkin."

Alexis abruptly threw her arms around his neck, rather as she had used to when she was little. "Love you, Dad," she told him, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

"I love you too, sweetie." He kissed her hair and moved to stand up but she didn't release him immediately and then his stomach clenched as he heard her sniff.

"I miss him, Dad," she confessed, her voice small. "I told him not to call me or contact me because my mind was made up but I miss him and it's only been a couple hours."

He sighed and sat down on the edge of her bed. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry." He hesitated but finally ventured, "Are you sure you made the right decision? If Ashley decides to stay in New York and go to Columbia, that's his choice, not yours."

She sniffled. "But he's only doing it because of me and that's not what he wants and sooner or later, he's going to resent me for making him miss out on going to Stanford."

"Columbia's a great school, though, and he'll get a world-class education there," he reasoned, rather guiltily aware that he might not be saying this solely for Alexis's or Ashley's benefit. He would absolutely love it if Alexis decided to go to Columbia.

"But he wants to go to Stanford. That's where he's always wanted to go and I can't let him sacrifice his future because of me and maybe it's just not meant to be. Why are relationships so complicated?"

"I guess that's what makes them interesting." He kissed her hair again. "Get some sleep, Alexis. Things might look clearer in the morning."

"Good night, Dad."

"Sleep well."

He made his way back downstairs to see that Beckett had been her usual efficient self in cleaning everything up so the blanket fort had not only been taken down but the room itself had been tidied up and looked neater than it had this morning.

Kate looked up the moment he entered their bedroom. "Is Alexis okay?"

He sighed. "No. The picture of her and Ashley on her nightstand upset her all over again. I hate seeing her cry and I'm just afraid she's making a mistake."

Kate squeezed his hand as he sat down heavily on the bed. "I know it's hard to see her cry but I think she'll figure it out. She's a smart kid and she's not alone."

He really, really loved this woman. He wondered if she had any idea what it meant to him to see her doing so much to comfort his daughter, to have her now reassuring him. (Of course she did.) He'd never had anyone to really talk to about his worries over Alexis. He talked to his mother a little but his mother was much more laissez-faire in her attitude towards parenting and he didn't find it that easy to confide in his mother as it was. Meredith had obviously never really been around and Gina had never gotten close to Alexis. He'd thought it weeks ago when Kate had been reassuring him when he'd had his argument with Alexis over GPS-tracking her phone but it struck him all over again just how much it meant to him. Fighting with Alexis was one thing but seeing Alexis cry, that was so much more painful. But now, to have Kate with him, part of his family, when Alexis was growing up and her hurts couldn't be soothed by a band-aid and a kiss—it was a gift.

Ironic, really, in some ways. Part of the reason he'd decided to marry Gina in the first place was because she was a smart, capable woman who was one of the few women he'd ever dated who had always seemed to understand the way Alexis came first with him and who hadn't been overly cloying or fake-sweet in the attention she paid to Alexis. He had thought that Gina would make a good mother-figure for Alexis as she grew older. He supposed he'd gotten what he deserved in having his marriage to Gina fall apart so spectacularly and so quickly for marrying her more for what he thought she would be than for what she actually was.

With Kate, he'd fallen in love with her for _her_ —for all the different facets of her complicated, fascinating character that made her extraordinary. He'd wanted Kate for himself, not for what she might be to Alexis. And in spite of that, Kate was the one who was proving herself to be the mother-figure Alexis had never really had, the one he'd almost given up hope of finding.

He put his arm around her and kissed her hair. "'Methinks I lied all winter when I swore my love was infinite,'" he murmured.

She lifted her head to frown at him. "What?"

"It's a quote." He paused and felt the first stir of self-satisfaction in hours. "Beckett, have I finally managed to stump you with a quote?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What's the full quote?"

"'Methinks I lied all winter when I swore my love was infinite, if spring make it more.'"

Her expression softened, faint color flushing her cheeks, green sparkles brightening her eyes. He forgot how to breathe for a moment and made a mental note to quote poetry to Beckett much more often if this was how she would look at him when he did so.

"Who wrote that?" she asked softly.

"John Donne." He smirked. (What? He couldn't help it. He almost never got the better of Beckett in anything. Even in trading quotes and as a writer who also read voraciously, that piqued his pride.) "I finally managed to stump you with a quote, didn't I? Admit it, Beckett."

She rolled her eyes. "And there you go again, being so sweet and then ruining it by being annoying."

"You love me anyway."

"I plead insanity."

He laughed and pulled her into his arms. "We'll be crazy together, then."

She smiled at him. "Together."

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: The line Castle quotes is from the poem "Love's Growth" by John Donne._

 _Thank you to all readers and reviewers._


	31. Chapter 30: Pretty Dead 2

Author's Note: The second of two chapters based on "Pretty Dead," so some familiar dialogue ahead, including Ashley's (in)famous question to Castle. This was a fun chapter to write so I hope people enjoy it.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 30_

Alexis was dispirited the next morning, enough that not even the strawberry happy-face pancakes he'd made for her elicited the smile they usually did. She ate one pancake dutifully but he had the distinct impression that for all she appreciated the taste, the pancake might as well have tasted like cardboard.

At least he and Beckett had done full justice to the pancakes and he did love cooking for Beckett, loved the bright smile she always gave him and the way she thanked him with a kiss.

He brooded over Alexis and Ashley the entire drive over to the precinct and Beckett, with her usual tact, didn't interrupt his thoughts. As begrudgingly as he'd come to accept the idea that Alexis had a serious boyfriend in the first place, seeing Alexis unhappy was the last thing he would ever want. And Ashley seemed like a good kid, even if he was a teenage boy.

He understood Alexis's reasoning—he did—Ashley very well could come to regret his choice and it was very likely that if he did, he would start to blame Alexis for it. It was hardly unusual in human nature to nurture resentment against someone else for one's own mistakes. But he also felt like Alexis was focusing too much on the difficulties of a long-distance relationship.

"Do you think Alexis is making a mistake?" he blurted out.

"It's her decision to make."

"I'm asking you. I don't necessarily want you to change her mind for her but I'm just wondering what you think."

Beckett sighed a little and thought about it. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that Beckett helped him understand Alexis better. Beckett was a serious person, just as Alexis had always been a serious person, an old soul as it were, and he was not really like that. He could be serious (more so, since meeting Beckett had made him grow up) but he was impulsive by nature and he was an optimist so he generally assumed that his choices would turn out well. He wasn't usually the sort to consider a decision backwards and forwards and sideways before making it. Beckett was decisive but she wasn't reckless, she thought things through. Like Alexis did. And as well as he knew Alexis, there were times that her thought process was a mystery to him, partly because he had never been a teenage girl and partly because he and Alexis were very different in the way they approached decisions. Beckett found it easier to understand Alexis in some ways. Beckett made him a better father.

"I don't know if I'd say she's wrong," Beckett finally answered slowly. "This isn't a math problem where there's a definite right and wrong answer. I think Alexis is being her usual sensible self. She's right that Ashley might well come to resent her if he goes to Columbia to stay close to her and she's also right that most high school relationships don't work out."

"You said that one of your high school friends managed a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend."

"Well, they had a long-distance relationship for a year until she decided to go to the same school he was at but then, awkwardly enough, they broke up a couple months into her freshman year."

"Oh. So not exactly a happy story." He grimaced.

"In fairness, Castle, they didn't break up because the long-distance thing didn't work out."

"True. I guess I just don't like the idea that Alexis is breaking up with Ashley not because she wants to but because she thinks it's the sensible, practical thing to do. Relationships are hard enough as it is and as much as I hate to admit it, she and Ashley seem to really care about each other."

They had reached the precinct and once she'd parked and turned the engine off, she reached out and squeezed his hand comfortingly. "Alexis is a smart kid, Castle. She might be more sensible than you ever were—"

"Hey!" he protested, more out of habit than because he disagreed.

She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "But she's not just about being practical. She has your heart, too, Castle. In the end, I think she'll listen to her heart."

Nope, he would never, ever get over hearing Beckett talk about his daughter with so much affection in her voice.

He pretended to preen. (Well, not that much of a pretense. Praise of Alexis almost always made him want to strut like a peacock.) "She has my heart, hmm? I like the sound of that. Tell me more about Alexis's great heart."

Beckett laughed and nudged him as they stepped onto the elevator. "I take it back. Alexis didn't get her heart from you; clearly, she got it from Martha."

"Well, seeing as how she got it from _my_ mother, obviously she got it from me."

"Nah. I think these loving hearts always tend to skip a generation," Beckett joked.

He huffed in mock disgruntlement. "Mean, Beckett. See if I ever make strawberry happy-face pancakes for you again."

"And you call me mean?" she retorted.

He pulled a face at her as they joined Esposito and the Captain in time to hear Esposito tossing out suggestions of a trip to Hawaii, earrings, and lingerie.

"Things you'd buy a woman," Castle identified in the tone of a contestant on Jeopardy, only in reverse. "What's the occasion and who's the lucky woman?" (Not that the identity of the woman was in any doubt; Montgomery's marriage to Evelyn was a thing of legend in the precinct.)

Montgomery smiled. "It's our 30th anniversary."

30 years of marriage. Oh wow. Thirty years of living and loving one person, the way it was supposed to be—what must that be like?

"Oh, sir, congratulations," Beckett smiled widely.

Castle felt a pinch of something like envy—to be married for that long and still as happy as the Captain and Evelyn were—but covered it by pretending to click his tongue against his cheek in mock disapproval. "Thirty years of marriage and you still don't know what to buy her?"

"If you stayed married long enough, you'd know it's hard to stay original after the first ten," Montgomery returned.

"I'm looking forward to finding that out for myself. It'll be a personal challenge: how to surprise a detective every year," he responded thoughtlessly only to realize rather belatedly what he'd said when Beckett abruptly coughed and returned to her desk, making something of a show of going through her inbox.

Espo smirked and even the Captain looked a little amused as they both eyed Beckett, who was pretending to be entirely unaffected and ignorant. Quite as if Castle hadn't just inadvertently, if somewhat obliquely, announced his intentions to her co-worker and her boss. (Oops. He made a mental note to call Jim Beckett.)

"So what's the secret to your success?" Castle asked somewhat hastily, although he lowered his voice. "Inquiring minds want to know."

Montgomery smiled. "There's no secret. Just keep showing up."

It was good advice. Deceptively simple but very true. Through good times and bad, through the honeymoon period and through the disagreements—through serial killers and criminal conspiracies and dirty bombs—just keep showing up. He could do that. He would do that. "Sounds a lot like the trick to parenting," Castle commented, not quite casually. It was what Meredith had never managed, after all. The sleepless nights and dirty diapers and spit-up on one's clothes—Meredith's idea of mothering Alexis had consisted of cooing over her briefly when Alexis was sleeping or carrying Alexis when she was clean and happy but the moment Alexis started to fuss, she'd passed Alexis off to him. Even now, Meredith's idea of parenting consisted of taking Alexis out shopping or to get a manicure done and little else.

Unlike Kate. Kate who always had time to talk to Alexis about her troubles, who had suggested building a blanket fort and watched a silly movie while eating ice cream, all in order to cheer Alexis up.

Montgomery nodded. "You're not wrong, Castle. Both take a lot of commitment and work." His tone changed. "All right, Detectives, back to work," he said briskly and walked off.

"Any news on Bobby Stark?" Beckett asked, her tone as crisp as it ever was, so much so that it was hard to imagine this woman ever being anything other than brisk and businesslike. But he knew her well enough by now to realize that at the moment, she was using her professional demeanor to deflect from her lingering embarrassment at what he'd blurted out.

Espo, on the other hand, didn't appear to notice anything unusual, but then again, Espo only ever really saw the Detective Beckett side of her. He—and Alexis and his mother and Jim—were the only ones who were privileged enough to see her as Kate. Esposito answered Beckett's question with his usual succinctness, summarizing Bobby Stark's (sleazy) alibi.

Predictably, having the case against a suspect fall through galvanized Beckett into action and they all followed her lead in following up every other possible clue to learn more about Amber Middleberry and what might have gotten her killed.

And the possible leads kept getting juicier, leading them to nude pictures of Amber, a blackmail threat, and an old boyfriend who might have decided that blackmailing his former girlfriend was the way to get back at her. Hell hath no fury like a creepy guy scorned by his beauty queen girlfriend—or something.

Beckett dispatched Ryan to try and find said creepy boyfriend and then leaned back in her chair, stretching a little, distracting Castle from his musings on Amber's creepy boyfriend because really, her movements as she stretched did wonderful things for her… chest even through her denim jacket. It also brought to mind images of Beckett in his bed, all lithe curves and passion and—he should not be thinking about this in the middle of the workday.

"Bad boyfriends and pageant—" she broke off, smirking a little. "Castle, you even listening to me?"

He blinked and jerked his eyes up to meet hers. "Huh—yes, what?"

"Amber might not be the only one with a rather creepy boyfriend," she teased.

He huffed but couldn't quite muster any indignation because she'd referred to him as her boyfriend and Beckett didn't do that often. "What were you saying about pageant queens?" he asked, attempting to change the subject.

She gave him a look that told him she knew exactly what he was doing (of course she did). "Uh huh. I was just about to say that this is like Debbie Winokur all over again."

"You having flashbacks?"

"It was my own personal Vietnam," she deadpanned. "Our place smelled of hairspray, perfume, and cigarettes. I'm surprised we didn't spontaneously combust."

"I love the smell of hairspray in the morning. Smells like victory," he quipped unthinkingly and then realized what he'd said. Since Beckett didn't normally use hairspray. "I mean, I used to but then I outgrew that," he added hastily. "Now my favorite smell in the mornings is of cherries." (It was true, though. Beckett's preferred shampoo was cherry-scented and as she generally awoke and showered before he did in the mornings, when he took his shower, the air always smelled like cherries and he loved it, this additional little sign of sharing a bathroom—sharing a life—with Beckett.)

She gave him a narrow-eyed look and opened her lips to comment but before she could, he heard another voice that was most certainly not Beckett's.

"Excuse me, Mr. Castle?"

He twisted around in his chair. "Ashley?"

The boy looked distinctly nervous as he nodded rather absently at Beckett. "Hi, Detective Beckett. Mr. Castle, I'm sorry to disturb you at work but I… uh… was wondering if we could talk for a couple minutes?"

Castle glanced at Beckett, their eyes meeting in silent communication for a second, he excusing himself and her understanding, and he stood up, joining Ashley. "Of course, Ashley."

They walked around to the back of the bullpen, off the beaten path as it were where it might be a little quieter.

"I'm sorry to bug you at work," Ashley apologized again.

"It's no trouble," he answered. "What is it?"

"Alexis established a no-calls, no-contact policy…"

"I know. She told me."

Ashley nodded. "Right. Well, I made a big mistake. I thought that if I chose Stanford, Alexis would think that I was blowing her off. Instead she's mad at me because I chose her over where I want to go to school. So now I'm going to Stanford which is where I wanted to go in the first place but…"

"But if you call her and tell her that, she'll be even angrier with you for ignoring her boundaries," he finished for the boy, feeling a spurt of fellow-feeling. Damned if he did and damned if he didn't. Typical female way of putting a guy in an impossible position—and then was immediately ashamed of himself for the thought. Alexis wasn't being deliberately manipulative; it wasn't in her. (Thank God she hadn't taken after Meredith in that.)

"Exactly. Look, I think Alexis and I can make the whole long-distance thing work, I really do. Would you tell her that? Would you talk to her for me?" Ashley asked with a sort of cautious hope.

The boy had guts, Castle had to admit. He was reluctantly impressed. But as for what he was asking… "Ashley, I appreciate that it was probably very hard for you to come down and talk to me today," he began tentatively. "But I just don't think it's very appropriate…"

"Or could you ask Detective Beckett to talk to Alexis?" Ashley hurriedly added. "I know how much Alexis looks up to her. I mean, if Detective Beckett agrees and you think it would be okay…" He hesitated and then looked up, meeting Castle's eyes squarely. "Mr. Castle, have you ever been crazy about someone who was determined to push you away?"

 _Yes._ It was his turn to have flashbacks of a sort, memories flooding his mind of two summers ago after he'd first looked into Beckett's mother's case. Or even more recently, last year before and even during Beckett's stay at the loft after the Scott Dunn case, when he'd been so… cautious when it came to Beckett, not wanting to push her too far in case she'd run. It wasn't the same. And he and Beckett were long past those days. (Thank God.) But he still felt another surge of empathy for Ashley.

"I…"

"Hey, Castle?"

Saved by the Beckett.

He turned to Beckett with some relief, although she looked apologetic. "Oh, sorry, guys. I didn't mean to… I'll just…"

"No, it's okay, Detective Beckett," Ashley quickly said before looking back at Castle. "Will you see if Detective Beckett agrees… Just… think about it, please?"

"Okay," he agreed.

Ashley pressed his lips together and then nodded. "Thank you, Mr. Castle. Detective Beckett," he added before he walked away.

"Bye, Ashley," Beckett responded quietly.

Beckett waited until Ashley was safely out of earshot before she turned back to him. "See if I agree to what?"

"He wants me—or you, if you're okay with it—to advocate for him."

"That's sweet. And a little awkward."

He made a face. "Mostly awkward, at least as far as I'm concerned. He said maybe if I didn't feel comfortable talking to Alexis on his behalf, you could try since he knows how much Alexis looks up to you."

Beckett glanced at him. "Castle, do you want me to talk to Alexis about this?"

"You want my permission?"

"Not permission, exactly. It's just… this is personal and I'm… you know Alexis better than I do."

He suddenly understood what Beckett meant, was almost tripping over her words so as not to say outright. Remembered her promise just after they'd gotten together that she would never try to come between him and Alexis.

He paused, glancing around and then took advantage of the fact that the bullpen wasn't all that crowded right now and everyone in it appeared to be entirely engrossed in their own work, to rest his hand on her waist for a moment, a more personal touch than he would ever normally permit himself, mindful of Beckett's professionalism. She didn't outwardly react but he felt the almost imperceptible way she curved into his touch, noticed the faint softening of her lips. "I would love it if you would talk to her about Ashley. And you can talk to her about anything, anytime."

"All right, I'll talk to her tonight," she agreed softly.

They both started a little and turned as Ryan interrupted them. "Hey, Beckett."

Castle dropped his hand and stepped back just a little as Ryan told them that apparently Jeremy Keiper had recently moved to New York and they returned to work.

The case took on another twist when they found Jeremy Keiper dead and, according to Perlmutter, murdered even before Amber had been.

So much for their theory that Jeremy had been blackmailing Amber. But if not him, then who?

Castle had a brainwave that there might have been a second blackmailer who had killed Jeremy and then Amber when Jeremy had tried to back out of the blackmail.

Beckett's expression flitted from skepticism to consideration to being halfway convinced. "That actually makes some sense."

He affected an injured expression. "You don't need to sound so surprised, Beckett."

"Any theory from you that doesn't involve a CIA conspiracy is a surprise," she quipped.

"Fair point."

She sighed a little and dropped back down into her chair. "Okay, we'll look into it."

He belatedly remembered what time it was. "What, now?"

She gave him a look. "Weren't you the one who was just going on and on about your new theory?"

"Yeah but it's late." It was. They'd stopped to pick up dinner on the way back to the precinct from Jeremy Keiper's place in Brooklyn, eating quickly before going to the morgue to get Perlmutter's official report on the body. "We can look into it tomorrow morning."

"I like how you say 'we,' when we both know that you aren't going to be doing any of the actual looking into it," she retorted somewhat tartly before turning to look at Ryan. "Hey Ryan, start looking into Keiper's associates first thing tomorrow, see if he might have had a partner in this blackmail scheme."

Ryan nodded. "On it, Beckett. Have a good night, Beckett, Castle." He returned his phone to his ear. "No, I don't need to stay later. I'm heading home now, honey."

Castle and Beckett exchanged knowing and somewhat amused looks. Ryan's frequent calls to reassure Jenny of his safety had become a byword in the precinct.

"Come on, Beckett, let's go home."

Beckett turned to him the moment they arrived back at the loft, kissing his cheek. "I'm going to go up and talk to Alexis if you'll put my gun away in your safe."

"You're trusting me to put your gun away? Have you fallen and hit your head?" he joked even as he accepted her gun.

"Don't make me regret it, Castle," she smirked at him before heading upstairs.

He dutifully put her gun away in the safe immediately and then headed to his desk. He expected this conversation with Alexis would take a little while so he had some time.

He pulled out his phone and made a call, waiting until he heard the now-familiar voice pick up. "Hi Jim, it's Rick."

"Is Katie okay?" Jim asked, concern tingeing his voice.

"She's fine," he quickly reassured, mentally kicking himself. He'd forgotten how Jim was likely to react to a phone call from him since it was usually Kate who called Jim and the last time Castle had called Jim had been to send him out of town during the dirty bomb scare. "I was actually just calling to see if you're free to meet up sometime this weekend."

"I'd love to see you and Katie this weekend."

"Ah, well, I was thinking it could just be the two of us this time without Kate."

"Oh." There was a brief pause during which Castle could practically hear Jim's mind putting the pieces together, why he might want to meet with Jim without Kate around. "Well, that sounds fine too," Jim continued on blandly. Yup, Jim definitely suspected. "How about lunch on Saturday?"

"Perfect," he agreed.

They arranged the details of when and where to meet and then ended the call, while Castle tried to calm the ridiculous flutter of nerves in his stomach. It was silly. He liked Jim Beckett and, more importantly, he knew Jim liked him and even approved of his relationship with Kate.

Oh god. He was really doing it, had arranged to meet with Jim to formally (or something) ask his blessing to propose to Kate.

He was going to propose to Kate. His stomach clenched a little, not because he had any doubts about her, but simply because of the sheer magnitude of what he felt, of all his hopes. It was the most important question he would ever ask, would dictate the course of the rest of his life.

And had the potential to utterly devastate his heart, a voice spoke up that he quickly and immediately squashed. Ridiculous. He _knew_ Kate loved him. He heard her voice again in his head. _You're my one, Castle. You—our relationship—this is it for me._

He let out a breath, his chest feeling oddly tight as if his heart had expanded to become too big for it. Kate was a one-and-done type of girl and _he_ was her one.

Just as she was his third-time's-the-charm.

Castle glanced towards the office door and then, reassured by the continued silence, opened up the drawer of his desk, pulling out the small jewelry box tucked in the back corner. He couldn't keep the ring in the safe because Kate would have seen it and he didn't dare keep it in the bedroom because, while Kate didn't often look through the nightstand on his side of the bed, she sometimes opened it if she was trying to find something. But Kate respected his privacy and never opened his desk drawers, except for the one drawer, which he used to keep everything they'd compiled about Johanna Beckett's case, the Beckett drawer as he mentally termed it.

He opened up the box to see the ring he had finally settled on. The large round diamond glittered and sparkled in the light. He had deliberately chosen a design with the stone set as close to the band as possible to make it less likely to catch on things, although he was aware that Beckett probably would not be able to wear the ring while working anyway because rings of any sort got in the way when handling a gun. But when not at work… He hoped Beckett liked it. He could picture it on her finger—oh, yes, he could picture it, his entire being seeming to clench with longing.

He heard a faint sound from upstairs and hastily put the ring away and hurried back out into the front room, heading towards the wine cooler.

He had poured two glasses of wine and was desultorily flipping channels on the TV when Beckett came down. It was… odd… to know someone else was having a serious conversation with Alexis and not him but he did think that in something like this, Beckett was the better person to talk to Alexis. She had talked to Alexis about Ashley more than he had lately.

"What did Alexis say?"

Beckett joined him on the couch, accepting the glass of wine with a faint smile of thanks. "I told her that Ashley looked as miserable as she does when he showed up today and about Ashley's decision to go to Stanford and that he wants to give a long-distance relationship a shot."

"And?"

"She hasn't made a decision, at least not that she told me. She asked me what I honestly thought about long-distance relationships and how all the statistics and things say that they don't really work, especially for high school sweethearts. I admitted that on paper, things may not look great for long-distance relationships between high school sweethearts. But I also pointed out that on paper, you and I don't make much sense either."

"Hey! I'm a writer and you're my muse. Our entire relationship started because of what's on paper."

This deliberate literal misinterpretation of her words got a roll of her eyes and a faint smile. "You're a multi-millionaire celebrity and I'm just a cop and that's just the start of ways in which we're different. You have to admit we don't exactly scream compatibility on paper."

"Speak for yourself," he huffed. "I always knew we'd be great."

She laughed softly and leaned in to kiss his cheek. "You're an optimist who believes in aliens and ghosts and Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster."

"Yes, well, look at us now."

"I know. You were right, Castle."

"Ooh, say that again."

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. "You heard me the first time, Castle."

"But I was right about us and you admitted it!" he gloated. "Ha! Success! See, I told you I'd make you believe in magic!"

"I will admit that your ability to annoy me is pretty magical," she said dryly.

He inclined his head. "Why, thank you, Beckett, I take that as a compliment."

She laughed. "You would. Anyway, I made the point that we don't live our lives on paper so the statistics shouldn't be her deciding factor."

He sobered. "What did Alexis say?"

"I think she's wavering a little. On the one hand, she still loves Ashley and doesn't want to break up but her sensible side is telling her the odds are against them and maybe she should just cut her losses now rather than continuing with something that's not meant to be. I pointed out, though, that as you said, relationships aren't math problems and there's no way of predicting what will happen in the future. All she can control are her choices and if she doesn't take a chance, she might end up regretting it later."

He sighed a little. "I just worry that she's so focused on the problem right in front of her that she's going to miss the entire… picture."

Oh. Oh wait. Picture. Those pictures of Amber Middleberry. Missing the entire picture. He was just about to be brilliant.

"Castle? Castle, what is it? I know that look. It's your 'I just had an idea about the case' look."

He scrambled up off the couch, hastily depositing his wine glass on the coffee table, before hurrying into his office. He was peripherally aware that Beckett was following him but he didn't answer her. Not then.

He immediately opened his laptop, waiting impatiently for it to wake up.

"Castle! Are you going to tell me your idea or what?"

She was using her sharp Detective Beckett tone, the one that made even Captain Montgomery hesitate about disagreeing with her and never failed to make him feel like he'd just received a severe electric shock. The one that would have brought him back from the dead to answer it. "Not yet. Not until I know I'm right," he answered her, running a quick search. "And… I am." He looked back up at her. "Beckett, you should know that you're dating a genius."

She looked almost ready to shoot him. "Yeah, a genius at annoying me."

He hurried to explain himself before she could act on her irritation. He might have pushed her a little… "I was thinking about those naked pictures of Amber's," he explained hastily.

She narrowed her eyes at him and he realized, belatedly, how that sounded. "No, not like that!" he corrected himself. "That came out wrong. No, it occurred to me that we were focusing on the wrong thing in the pictures. What if Amber and Jeremy were killed not because of who was in the photos but because of where the photos were taken?"

Her frown cleared. "Missing the entire picture," she repeated slowly, "because all we were focused on was Amber and the fact that she was naked."

"Which, admittedly, is pretty damn distracting," he added, turning his laptop around on his desk. "Here. Take a look at this," he said, directing her to the website he'd just pulled up and the large pictures of Victor Baron's enormous mansion in the Hamptons for the cover story in the issue from a few months back of _Today's Architect_. (The Baron's place in the Hamptons made his own house in the Hamptons look like a hovel by comparison. The Baron's Hamptons mansion could have held its own against Versailles for ostentation with just about everything that could be gilded being gilded until the place looked like King Midas could live there.) "Anything look familiar?"

She bent over to peer at his laptop screen and he saw the exact second she realized as her jaw went slack. "The painting, the background… this is where those pictures of Amber were taken."

He smirked. "Exactly. I told you I'm brilliant."

Her entire expression had lit up with excitement the way it always did when they got a new lead. She was practically incandescent with it and he thought, not for the first time, that at times like this, one could practically illuminate all of Manhattan with the energy radiating out of her. It was the most incredible (and hot) thing he'd ever seen and he would never ever tire of seeing it.

She caught his face in her hands and gave him a quick, fast kiss on the lips. "Castle, I think you just cracked this case wide open! Amber was having an affair with Victor Baron! That's what the blackmail must have been about. We need to look into the Baron. I need to contact the boys and tell them and…"

"Can we go back to the part about me being brilliant?" he asked plaintively (partly to save the boys from having their nights ruined by Beckett, who was perfectly capable in her current state of mind of insisting they return to the precinct and start following this new lead right this instant. Beckett wasn't generally inconsiderate and as she hated asking people for anything, almost never was. The single exception was when it came to solving her cases because she was single-minded in her focus and determination and she tended to forget about things like meals or normal working hours or sleep.)

She laughed and bent to kiss him again and he took advantage of her position and her proximity to slip his arm around her waist and tug her into his lap.

"I love it when you tell me I'm brilliant," he grinned at her.

"I don't remember saying any such thing," she retorted rather tartly, although the tone was belied by the way she slipped her arms around his neck. "And why would I ever need to since you're always so willing to proclaim your own brilliance?"

"'Where there is real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation,'" he intoned with mock solemnity.*

"Pride goes before a fall, Mr. Darcy," she teased.

"I already fell in love with you, didn't I? And it's the smartest thing I ever did."

"You are such a sap, Richard Castle," she said but her words were belied by the softness of her tone and her smile and then by the touch of her lips to his.

He tightened his arms around her and deepened the kiss and set himself to ensuring that she wasn't capable of thinking about anything beyond the two of them. And if a man could judge by the soft moan that caught in the back of her throat, he was doing a damn good job of it.

* * *

Castle wondered what Alexis's demeanor would be like this morning, whether she would have made a decision about Ashley and if the decision would make her happier.

He didn't have long to wait and wonder. As it turned out, he heard her footsteps as she came running lightly down the stairs when he'd just sat down with his coffee and knew just from the sound of her steps that she was better, happier. He turned to look at her, his guess confirmed by her smile.

"Good morning, pumpkin," he greeted her.

She came straight to him, brushing a quick kiss on his cheek. "Morning, Dad. Morning, Kate."

"Morning, Alexis."

"You seem happier today," he ventured a little cautiously.

Alexis gave them a bright smile as she poured herself some orange juice. "I'm meeting Ashley before school starts so I need to head out," was all she said.

"So you decided to give things a chance with Ashley," he guessed, not quite a question but not quite not.

"Yes. I thought about what you said, Kate," Alexis answered, turning to Kate. "You were right and I know if I didn't give Ashley a chance, I'd always wonder what might have been. I don't want that."

"Ah yes," he rejoined. "'Of all sad words of tongue or pen…'"

"'The saddest are these, it might have been,'" Beckett finished the quote with him in messy unison.**

He and Beckett exchanged quick smiles while Alexis's gaze bounced between them and she blurted out, "You two are definitely meant for each other."

Beckett ducked her head in that way she had when she was (adorably) flustered and he knew, although he couldn't see, that she'd be biting her lip to keep from smiling and failing.

He grinned at Alexis. "Thank you, daughter. I think so too."

Alexis laughed lightly and came around to give him another kiss. "I'm going to leave to meet up with Ashley." And then, quite as if she did it every day, she turned and gave Beckett a quick kiss on the cheek too and then turned and had left the loft while Beckett was still looking a little surprised.

Castle felt weirdly torn, his heart melting even as he simultaneously could have jumped for joy. "I think you have a fan for life in Alexis," he said with an attempt at lightness.

Beckett gave an odd little laugh, not one of amusement so much as something like wonder. "I guess so."

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in to kiss her hair. "I'm your fan for life too, Beckett," he told her. "Thank you for talking to her yesterday."

Beckett laughed suddenly and he blinked since he hadn't, for once, been trying to be funny. "What's so funny?"

"It reminded me of what Captain Montgomery said when you first started shadowing me. The day after the Tisdale case closed, I was writing the case report congratulating myself that I'd gotten rid of you—"

"Hey!" he interrupted.

She ignored him. "And then the Captain called me into his office and said, 'Looks like you have a fan.' And there you were, scruffy and smirking. I wanted to shoot you."

He pasted on an injured expression. "I'm wounded, Beckett. How could the sight of my ruggedly handsome face make you want to shoot me?"

She smirked at him. "Very easily. I think I spent the first three months of our working together wanting to shoot you."

"And I spent that time wanting to sleep with you."

"You stopped wanting to sleep with me after the first three months?" she teased.

He snorted. "You know better than that. I'd have to be _dead_ to stop wanting to sleep with you. What I meant was that after the first couple months, I stopped wanting _only_ to sleep with you." He grimaced. Mental note: restore his brain-to-mouth filter when talking to Beckett. "Sorry. I was an ass back then." He had been, hadn't he? He hated the memory of how he'd thought of her in terms of a one night stand.

She only laughed softly and patted his cheek teasingly. "Don't look like that, Castle. It's not like it's a surprise. Why do you think I turned you down that first time?"

The memory of Beckett as she'd been back then flashed through his mind in vivid Technicolor—the short hair, that teasing, challenging smile. _Why, Castle, so I can be one of your conquests?_ Felt again that visceral tug of attraction, of sheer want. The challenge of her that had first ensnared him.

"Instead you made me your conquest, made me yours." He didn't remember when or how he'd gone from thinking in terms of one (hot) night to a brief fling to a real relationship to always. He suspected his view of her had changed, for real and for good, from that first time she'd told him about her mother and he knew that by the time he'd heard from Clark Murray about the real nature of Johanna Beckett's wounds that somehow, without his even realizing it, his feelings Beckett-ward had become very real and serious. The thought of how much it would hurt her to find out the truth had wrenched his gut, made him feel a little physically sick—it had been the first indication he had of how much he'd come to care.

"No, Castle, not a conquest. Never that. A partner. Instead we became partners," she corrected him.

"Much better than a conquest," he agreed. They were equals, not victor and vanquished. No one had lost anything; they had only gained.

"Exactly. And speaking of being partners, we should leave for work, Castle."

"Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we go," he quipped.

"Oh, that's uncanny."

He blinked, confused. "What?"

"The resemblance between you and the seven dwarves," she answered with mock seriousness. "I just can't decide which one you're most like. Sneezy? No, Dopey."

"Ha ha, Beckett."

She laughed at him as she vanished into his office to retrieve her gun. "Well, you're certainly not Bashful."

"Keep going and I'll turn into Grumpy," he pretended to threaten.

"Just don't start calling me Snow White," she quipped.

"Well, you are the fairest of them all."

She rolled her eyes. "Cheesy, Castle."

"I'm not cheesy, I'm charming! Ask anyone."

"Fine," she smirked. "I'll ask Perlmutter if he thinks you're charming."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm charming to humans, not misanthropic alien races, of which Perlmutter is clearly a member."

She grinned at him and he had a fleeting moment of incredulity that he was having this sort of silly exchange with the prickly, no-nonsense Detective Beckett he'd met. She still didn't have much patience for nonsense while working but outside of work, when it was just them or with his family, she was… fun. She played laser tag with him and Alexis, had watched a silly animated movie to cheer Alexis up.

How could he not want to spend the rest of his life with her?

"Say, Castle, I was thinking," Beckett broke the brief silence, her tone changing, becoming very much her Detective Beckett voice, "In light of what you figured out last night about Amber and Victor Baron, I think we'll hold off on making Ryan look into Jeremy Keiper's associates."

"Yeah, you're right," he agreed, even as he felt a tendril of warmth sprout up inside him. The decision was up to her since she was the leader of the team but she was mentioning it to him even though she didn't need to. He really was her partner, wasn't he? "You are going to mention to the Captain and the boys that I was the one who cracked the case wide open, right?" he asked with mock plaintiveness to hide his sudden rush of emotion.

She shot him a teasing look. "I'll consider it," she deadpanned as she parked in front of the precinct.

He pretended to huff and she laughed, nudging him with her elbow as they walked into the precinct. "Focus, Castle."

He threw a mock salute. "Yes, ma'am."

She rolled her eyes but a small smile escaped and he grinned to himself. He loved being able to make Beckett smile, especially when he could tell that she tried to keep from smiling only to fail.

Once in the bullpen, they went right back to work and his brain wave over those nude photos really did end up cracking the case. It led them to the fact that Amber had been the blackmailer, not the victim. A sharp reminder that they'd fallen into the all-too-common trap of assuming the murder victim was an innocent, one of the good guys as it were, an easy mistake since they were acting on behalf of the victim and getting justice for the victim. And then of course, _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_ , so that almost everyone they spoke to about victims had nothing but praise, insisting the victim hadn't had an enemy in the world. It was understandable but it was a mistake nonetheless. As it had turned out to be in this case, in assuming that Amber Middleberry really had been the sweet, young innocent rather than a cool-headed schemer.

From there, it didn't take much to realize that Amber's agent had been lying to them and the case was solved.

Castle's sense of satisfaction was short-lived though as Captain Montgomery announced he was retiring—he was what?—and as if that wasn't enough, the boys clearly blamed him for it. As if he could possibly have known or guessed what the Captain would do with his advice!

Retiring?! The Captain lived and breathed being a cop more than anyone Castle had ever met except for Beckett herself. Montgomery _was_ a cop to the very core of his being so much so that it was impossible to imagine him as anything else

Retiring? Castle was instantly concerned for Beckett's reaction since he knew how important the Captain was to Beckett but shockingly, Beckett was the only one who accepted the Captain's announcement with equanimity, explaining about Montgomery's past threats to retire.

For once, during the drive back to the loft, Beckett was the talkative one, mentioning that Montgomery had contemplated retiring about a month before the Tisdale case and then reminiscing about the way the Captain and Evelyn had invited her and the boys to their house for dinner to celebrate the first time their team had the highest case closure rate, which led to the precinct as a whole having the highest case closure rate for the past year. It had pretty much become a tradition that the team would be invited for dinner when the case closure stats were released as the team stayed at the top. Castle had gone to the dinner the last two years but hadn't realized it was a tradition for that reason.

It was rare for Beckett to reminisce at such length but Castle guessed that seeing the Captain and Evelyn interacting, the love they so clearly shared obvious, had softened Beckett's mood, made her more inclined to share. He made the occasional comment but otherwise stayed mostly silent, trying not to do anything that might interrupt Beckett's flow of reminiscences. He loved listening to Beckett as she talked, shared memories. Not only because he wanted to know everything about her but because it was so precious to him to know that Beckett trusted him, was sharing her past with him. And he liked the sound of her voice as she spoke, liked to watch the play of expression across her face. (Was there anything he didn't like about Beckett? He was ridiculously besotted but at the moment, he couldn't think of anything.)

They arrived back at the loft in short order.

"And Evelyn is such a great cook," Beckett went on. "It was hilarious to watch the way Espo and Ryan scarfed down their dinners. They ate as if they expected it to be their last meal before a famine hit."

"What's new about that?" Castle joked. "Espo always tends to eat like a famine victim."

She laughed. "Yeah. If it weren't for the way he works out so much, he'd probably be as round as a barrel."

He made a face as the words conjured up an image of Esposito with a body resembling that of Jabba the Hut. "That's a mental image I wish you hadn't put into my head."

"Sorry, Castle," she said, not sounding particularly sorry at all.

He shrugged. "Not your fault that I have such a vivid imagination."

"No, your imagination is all yours," she said lightly.

He grinned at her as he opened the door to the loft and then was momentarily brought up short as he saw Ashley sitting curled up with Alexis on the couch. He wasn't thrilled with how closely they were sitting (he supposed he should just be thankful that they weren't kissing) but the smile on Alexis's face largely made up for it. "Ashley, what are you doing here?" he greeted the boy mildly.

Ashley looked decidedly more cheerful than he had in the precinct the day before. "Hi, Mr. Castle, Detective Beckett."

"Hi, Ashley, Alexis," Beckett greeted.

Alexis beamed, her face bright. "Hey, Dad, guess what?"

Castle felt himself smiling automatically, his heart lifting at her obvious happiness. "What?"

"I'm going to Stanford," Alexis announced happily.

His smile faded. Stanford. In California. His daughter.

"What?" he repeated. There was a weird buzzing in his ears. He couldn't have heard right. Alexis wasn't going to college for another year; she hadn't even started applying yet. She couldn't possibly have decided…

"I'm applying for early admission. And since I've been taking extra classes each semester since my freshman year, I have enough credits to graduate in the fall."

He sank down blindly onto the edge of the armchair since he wasn't sure his legs would hold him up. She was leaving? She was going to graduate early? "What?"

He was vaguely aware of hearing Beckett say, "Wow, Alexis, that's great."

Great? No. No, it was not great. It was the absolute opposite of great. It was—this couldn't—she couldn't—he wasn't ready for this.

"Yeah. This way, Ash and I will be together in January. In college!"

Alexis looked and sounded so happy and for the first time in her life, her obvious giddiness didn't make him happy. He felt a weird twisting in his gut and wondered if he was actually going to be sick.

"What?" He was a writer; he should have more words but at the moment, he couldn't quite manage anything else but to repeat the befuddled question. A couple minutes ago, his life had been almost perfect, listening to Beckett share some of her memories. And now… The emotional whiplash was making him dizzy.

"That was actually her idea, sir," Ashley hurriedly interposed, trying not to look too pleased.

Damn right he shouldn't look pleased. This was his fault. If not for Ashley, his little girl wouldn't be planning to leave him to go across the country in a matter of months.

January! That was… barely more than six months away.

Oh god. His little girl was graduating and planning to move across the country, thousands of miles away. In a matter of months.

He felt as if he'd been punched in the head. He needed to get away, needed to go… somewhere where he wasn't faced with Ashley's and Alexis's smiling faces. Away where he couldn't see how happy Alexis was at the idea of leaving him.

He jerkily stood up. "I… uh… need to go… make a call," he announced awkwardly, his voice not sounding like himself to his own ears. "I just… uh, yeah, excuse me," he blurted out and then practically fled, heading into his office and then through it into his bedroom so he could collapse onto his bed.

Alexis was leaving. For college. In California. In January.

His stomach twisted and he bent over, his elbows resting on his knees as he supported his head in his hands.

Alexis was leaving. His baby girl.

Leaving. To California! He wouldn't see her for months on end…

He remembered last summer, the weeks of her summer program. The five weeks of the program once the Fourth of July weekend had been over had been awful. He had only spoken to her on the phone a couple times a week. After two weeks of not seeing Alexis, he'd wondered if this was what it felt like to be in withdrawal from an addictive drug because the longing to see his daughter had gotten almost physically painful at times. Finally, he'd given in and used the excuse of being about to leave on his book signing tour to drive out to Princeton to see Alexis, taking her out for dinner. And even so, the remaining three weeks before her program had ended had nearly been the death of him. (His tour had been even worse because not only had he been away from Alexis, he'd been away from Beckett as well, staying in a series of hotel rooms which, no matter how nice they were, were desolate, bleak rooms without Beckett.) When Alexis finally returned, he hadn't wanted to let her out of his sight for days.

College? On the other side of the country? He wouldn't see her for months at a time!

God, when had his baby girl grown up so much? He swore it seemed like only yesterday that she'd been a tiny little redheaded moppet, the cutest kid in the world. Memories flooded his mind, of him hovering over Alexis as she slept in her cradle, of the first time Alexis had managed to toddle into his arms on her chubby little legs, of countless nights tucking her into bed along with Monkey Bunkey and telling her bedtime stories. He could almost feel the phantom touch of her little hand in his from all the years when she'd been little enough that she'd held his hand everywhere they went.

He knew she was there before she spoke, sensed her presence in the doorway before she came nearer.

"Castle." She reached out and touched his hair lightly and he straightened up only enough to wrap his arms around her waist and tug her in so he could rest his head against her stomach.

"How could you say that it's great?" he mumbled. "It's not great. It's… terrible."

"Castle," she sighed, one hand resting on his shoulder while the fingers of her other hand lightly ruffled the hair at his nape, sending little tremors of sensation through him. He shut his eyes, feeling some of the tension leave his body, and reflected that he entirely understood why cats purred. "Alexis is happy about this."

"I know," he grumbled disgruntledly, "but I just… she shouldn't be deciding where to go to school because of a boy."

"Stanford is an amazing school. She'll get a great education there and it might be good for her to get away from home, see what life is like on the other side of the country. She'll get to meet so many different types of people."

"That's not the point," he huffed. "It's just so far and she shouldn't be picking a college on the basis of a boy. And graduating early?"

"It's not like she'll graduate tomorrow, Castle. This is all still months away."

"That's still too fast for me."

"Castle, you've always known Alexis would leave for college eventually. She's growing up. You need to let her stretch her wings, leave the nest."

"She's my baby girl," he protested plaintively.

"You have months to get used to the idea of Alexis leaving," she said soothingly. "She's not going anywhere soon. Now, I told Ashley he should stay for dinner and had Alexis start getting dinner ready. Do you think you can at least pretend to be okay with this for dinner?"

"No," he answered rather petulantly.

She laughed softly and tugged at his hands to pull him to his feet. When he was standing, she slipped her arms around his waist and kissed him, lingering long enough that by the time she drew back, he really couldn't feel that despondent. "Better now, Rick?" she asked, a touch of teasing in her voice.

Her use of his first name warmed his heart and he couldn't help a faint smile. "Keep kissing me and I won't remember why I was upset in the first place."

She kissed his chin quickly. "Come on, Castle, Alexis and Ashley are waiting. And try to be cheerful, for Alexis's sake. She looked like someone had just stolen her favorite toy when you left in such a hurry."

"You're going to help me deal with this, right, Kate?" He knew he sounded needy but he couldn't help it. The idea of Alexis leaving, going across the country, had hit him like a punch to the gut. He really wasn't ready for this to be happening.

She met his eyes and smiled. "Always."

He felt a surge of gratitude to have this amazing woman in his life. God, what would he do without her?

He kept a grip on her hand as they returned to the main room of the loft. Alexis was standing at the stove and she turned immediately as he finally released Beckett's hand and went over to Alexis, slipping his arm around her shoulder and kissing her forehead.

"Sorry about that, pumpkin," he told her quietly. "Your news just hit me a bit hard because of how much I'm going to miss you. But I'm proud of you."

Alexis's face lit up with a smile as she hugged him. "Thanks, Dad." She drew back with a glance at Ashley. "I was thinking of having spaghetti for dinner with salad because it'll be easy."

"Sounds good to me."

He glanced at Beckett, who was talking quietly with Ashley, and met her eyes as she gave him a quick smile. And he thought that, after all, maybe he could deal with Alexis leaving for college, as long as he had Beckett. He had Beckett; he wouldn't be alone.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _* From "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen._

 _** From the poem "Maud Muller" by John Greenleaf Whittier._

 _A/N 2: There will be one non-episode related interlude of a chapter before getting into the S3 finale._

 _Thank you, as always, to all readers and reviewers and everyone who's followed this fic or added it to their favorites._


	32. Chapter 31: Interlude

Author's Note: A non-episode related interlude of a chapter. Consider this the deep breath before the plunge.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 31_

Castle was nervous. Ridiculously so.

He tried to tell himself there was no need to be nervous—there wasn't—he knew Jim Beckett liked him and even approved of his relationship with Kate. There was nothing to be nervous about.

But the words failed utterly to calm down the butterflies rioting in his stomach. The enormity of this whole thing—the magnitude of what he felt for Kate—had always had the ability to terrify him because it was just _so much_ and it wasn't like he had a good track record where marriage was concerned. Hell, he'd basically given up on the idea of marriage entirely when he'd met Beckett. He knew this relationship with Beckett was different. She was the love of his life and this relationship was _it_ for him, he knew that with every fiber of his being.

But it didn't mean he wasn't nervous.

At least, as it had happened, he hadn't needed to lie or make up some excuse to leave the loft. After what had happened to Ryan, Castle had been a little apprehensive about what excuse he would give to Beckett to explain this lunch appointment but as luck would have it, he hadn't needed to come up with a reason at all. With the relationship drama surrounding Ashley's college acceptances out of the way, Ashley had officially asked Alexis to go to the prom with him next weekend and so Alexis needed to buy a dress. And she had asked Kate and his mother to go with her to choose her dress. They were making a girls' day out of it and while he had made a show of pouting at being left out, he hadn't been able to hide the fact that he was too happy over Alexis's closeness with Kate to really mind. It also conveniently meant that he hadn't needed to worry about what story he was going to tell to explain his own absence. Which was lucky because he wasn't good at lying to Beckett and hated doing it.

The thought of Kate, Alexis, and his mother shopping at this very moment for Alexis's prom dress made him smile, warmth settling in his chest. He might have accompanied his mother and Alexis to go dress shopping two years back but he was aware that dress shopping for the prom was one of those time-honored mother-daughter rituals. As hard as he had tried to make it up to Alexis in not having a mother—he had spent an entire afternoon in a nail salon learning from professionals about applying nail polish just in order to be able to show Alexis and had spent another morning learning how to do a French braid for Alexis's hair when she'd been very young—he was always conscious that there were some things where there was no real substitute for having a mother or at least a woman's help. Fashion and clothes in general was one of them because if he'd had his way, Alexis would never have left the house without being covered from neck to toe in an outfit no more revealing than a nun's habit. He had (grudgingly) accepted the impossibility of that but it didn't mean he was happy about it. And spending his childhood in theatres, surrounded by actresses, meant that he was aware enough of women's body issues and resulting problems like eating disorders not to have been made rather paranoid about not fostering such insecurities in Alexis, so he always assured Alexis she looked just perfect as she was. Which made him a less than helpful person to accompany Alexis dress shopping.

But Alexis had Kate now, Kate to be the strong female role model and mother figure that he'd always wanted Alexis to have. Alexis had Kate to go shopping with, talk about clothes and makeup with. And unlike with Meredith, he didn't need to worry that Kate would tell Alexis anything that came within a mile of implying that Alexis's primary value was in her looks or that she needed to look good to attract boys. He trusted Kate with Alexis the way he trusted himself, possibly more since he doubted his own wisdom where Alexis was concerned all the time.

(He wanted Kate Beckett to be the mother of his children. He'd known it for months now but with every day that went by, with every time he saw how close she and Alexis had become, the certainty, the wish, built inside him. He wanted kids with Kate. And she'd said someday.)

He really was the luckiest man in the world, that the most incredible woman he'd ever met loved him (somehow) and that she loved his family, had become part of his family so seamlessly.

He knew from experience the awkwardness that could result if the women in his life didn't get along very well. His mother and Meredith had tended to rub each other the wrong way. Two actresses, both with diva tendencies, did not make for a peaceful household; he had only been fortunate that his mother hadn't been living with them at the time and he knew, too, that part of the lingering tension between the two these days was that his mother had never forgiven Meredith for the divorce and abandoning him and Alexis as she had. His mother had never quite taken to Gina either and Gina had generally returned the sentiment, treating his mother with courtesy but little warmth.

Kate was different, had been different from the beginning. His mother loved Kate and Kate returned the affection whole-heartedly and with more patience for his mother's dramatics than even he had. And Kate's closeness with Alexis—he sometimes thought that it was the greatest source of happiness in his entire life to see the two people he loved the most getting along so well. Seeing Kate with Alexis soothed the little sore place in his heart, the part of him that still felt guilty for not having been able to give Alexis the kind of mother she deserved. It wasn't quite the same; Kate could not entirely make up for Meredith's maternal deficiencies but it helped.

Castle was pulled from his thoughts as he saw Jim Beckett walk into the restaurant and he immediately stood up, lifting a hand in greeting.

Jim smiled as he came towards him. "Rick, I thought I was going to be early but I guess not."

"Hi, Jim. You're still early; I just got restless waiting in the empty loft so I decided to wait here instead," he explained as he sat down again. It wasn't, precisely, the truth but it wasn't untrue either. He'd been a little too jittery to sit around in the loft and he knew, too, from what Beckett had told him that her dad was always punctual.

"The empty loft?" Jim queried. "So where are Katie and Alexis and Martha right now?"

He felt himself smiling, again, at the thought. "They're actually out shopping for a prom dress for Alexis."

"So Alexis is going to prom with her boyfriend, Ashley, right?"

Castle was impressed with Jim's memory. He seemed to have a razor-sharp grasp of everything Kate ever said so even though Jim had never met Ashley, he remembered his name. "Yes, Ashley's his name. He's a senior, you know, and the prom is next weekend."

"Well, I'm sure Alexis is looking forward to that."

"Yes, I think she is." He forced himself not to grimace at the thought.

Jim rested his arms on the table and met Castle's gaze. "So to what do I owe the pleasure, Rick?"

Castle swallowed and tried to quell the butterflies that had momentarily calmed down in the exchange of greetings but were now acting up again. No reason to be nervous. None at all. Jim had seen Kate wearing one of his old sweatshirts and hadn't so much as batted an eye, let alone gone for a shotgun, and he knew Jim liked him.

But then again, he knew how he felt about Ashley. He felt a fresh surge of empathy for the boy and of grudging respect too, to come to him and ask him to intercede on his behalf.

Damn it, he was not going to be outdone by a teenage boy.

Even if the situations were different. He was asking Jim to trust him with Kate's life and happiness forever.

Oh god. That hadn't helped. For one fleeting second, he wondered if he might actually be sick.

He tried to smile but couldn't manage it—and on second thought, maybe that was a good thing. He didn't want to make it seem like he wasn't taking this seriously. "I—" he cleared his throat and then finished, in a rush, "I want to propose to Kate andI'dlikeyourblessingbeforeIdo."

He released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Well, it was out now.

He waited, watching Jim Beckett's expression, that was unhelpfully bland. He belatedly realized that as a lawyer, Jim probably had quite as good of a professional poker-face as Kate did.

"You want to propose to Katie," Jim repeated and Castle irrationally wished that Kate was there because she could probably read her father's tone and expression but he couldn't. All he knew was what Jim wasn't smiling. "My daughter is everything to me. Exactly what makes you think you're good enough for her?"

Ouch. Castle tried not to wince. He was a twice-divorced single father with a well-publicized playboy past, which, even if it had been somewhat exaggerated, was not incorrect either. To say nothing of the fact that he was almost 10 years older than Kate.

But… He heard Kate's voice in his mind. _You are an amazing man and there could never be anyone better for me than you._

He met Jim's eyes. "I'm not. But I'd like to spend the rest of my life trying to be."

For the space of a heartbeat, Jim's expression didn't change and then Jim's lips twitched. "I imagine Katie would disagree with you about not being good enough for her but that's something you can take up with her."

Castle relaxed a little and managed a faint smile. "So do I have your blessing, sir?"

"I thought I told you not to call me sir," Jim said, smiling now. "And of course you have my blessing, for what it's worth."

He felt his nervousness dissipating at the sight of Jim's smile as it belatedly occurred to him that Jim had a streak of mischief in him, not unlike Kate's. Jim had been playing the role of disapproving father to give him a hard time. (Mental note: Jim Beckett could be just as evil as his daughter.)

"Thank you, Jim," he answered with entirely unfeigned gratitude. He was a father too; he knew precisely how much trust Jim was showing by giving his blessing. Castle couldn't imagine trusting any man alive with Alexis in such a way but he shoved the thought aside. Alexis and marriage were two things that didn't belong in the same sentence. Not for at least another decade and more, possibly ever. He needed to look into convents again. "I do love Kate, very much," he added quietly. "I can't imagine not loving her and I promise I will always do everything in my power to keep her safe and happy."

"I know, Rick," Jim said soberly. He paused and then went on, "You're a father too. I know you know how fathers worry about their daughters, if they're safe, if they're happy, if their boyfriends are treating them right."

Castle nodded. Yes, he knew. Worrying over Alexis kept him up at night sometimes and that was with her in high school and still living with him. Not for the first time, he could only marvel at Jim's strength to be able to deal with worrying over Kate's safety while knowing she was a cop and had such a dangerous job.

"But I've never worried about you when it comes to how you'd treat Katie."

Castle momentarily forgot how to breathe in the sheer amazement of this statement.

Jim smiled a little, a faintly teasing glint entering his eyes. "And that's not only because I know if you didn't treat Katie right, she would shoot you."

Castle managed a brief chuckle. "Yes, she would."

Jim's smile faded. "You've made Katie happy, Rick. I haven't seen her smile and laugh so much in years and I don't think I'll ever be able to thank you enough for putting that light in her eyes."

"You don't need to thank me because I know I'm the lucky one to have her in my life. Kate has been—she is the best thing that's ever happened to me and my family."

Jim looked away, fidgeting with the silverware on the table in a way that surprised Castle because from all he knew of Jim Beckett, Jim was no more a fidgeter than his daughter was, and then took a gulp of water. "I know I… failed Katie for so many years when she needed me," he finally went on, his voice so low that Castle almost had to strain to hear the words. "And I will never forgive myself for that, for letting her down the way I did…"

Castle's heart clenched in sympathy for the pain and regret in the other man's voice. He had the irrational sense of having intruded somewhere private because he had no right to be hearing this, no right to have Kate's father speaking of something so devastatingly personal that should stay between Jim and Kate alone. He opened his mouth to say something—he didn't even know what—but then closed it again because how could he possibly respond?

"Katie's forgiven me and that means more than I can say but I know… I know it's made it hard for Katie to trust people, hard for her to let people help her." Jim paused and then after a minute, looked up and met Castle's eyes. "I know Katie trusts you and relies on you. Just don't let her down, Rick, and that's all I can ask."

"I won't, Jim, not if I can help it," he promised. "I'll always be there for Kate." It was a vow, as solemn and binding as any he might make before a judge. And Castle kept his promises.

"Thank you, Rick. I appreciate that." Jim paused and then added, "And I appreciate your asking me for my blessing although you didn't really need to."

Castle managed a smile. "Like you said, Jim, I have a daughter and I know how I'd feel if some boy proposed to Alexis without asking me first." He forced himself not to grimace at the thought and only added, more seriously, "And I know how important you are to Kate, how much it means to her to know you approve." He left unsaid that he also knew how important Kate was to Jim; with the loss of Johanna, Kate really was all Jim had left. (He didn't know how Jim had done it, survived Johanna's loss, because the mere thought of losing Kate—no, he couldn't even think it, his mind shying away from the very thought.)

Jim gave a faint smile. "I might approve but my daughter makes her own decisions. She's been making her own decisions since she was about five and to this day, I'm not sure either her mother or I succeeded in making her change her mind once it was made up more than a handful of times."

"I'm fully aware of Kate's stubbornness," Castle assured Jim wryly.

At that moment, there was a brief interruption as the server approached to see if they were (finally) ready to order (Castle knew there was a reason he had chosen to come here; the wait staff seemed to have a preternatural sense of when it was acceptable to intrude and never rushed guests) and he and Jim both turned their attention to the menus for the first time and made a quick selection.

The interruption, as brief as it was, eased the atmosphere and Castle felt himself relaxing because, now that the apprehension was over, it was easier to remember that he genuinely liked Jim and enjoyed the man's company.

Jim apparently felt much the same way because his expression and his posture had eased. "How is Katie doing? She told me when we met last weekend about what happened to her former training officer and I know he meant a lot to her."

Castle sobered at the mention of Royce. God, was it possible that Royce had only been dead for two weeks now? Somehow it felt like it had been much longer than that, partly because travelling always made it seem like a long amount of time had passed and partly because the past few days, he had been so preoccupied with all the drama surrounding Alexis's relationship with Ashley that Royce had slipped to the back of his mind.

"She's still grieving," he answered carefully. He knew that. Kate had not mentioned it—in typical Beckett fashion—but he knew she still felt the odd sharp moments of grief over Royce. He caught it in the flicker of her expression at certain times, saw it in the times he noticed her looking at the picture of herself and Royce in uniform which she had brought over from her apartment and placed on the shelf in his office which had gradually become reserved for Beckett's personal pictures. "She arranged for Royce's funeral, as you probably know, and I think that helped give her some closure."

It had been a very small, private ceremony, two days after they'd returned from LA. He, Esposito, Ryan, Montgomery, Lanie, and another man, whom Castle had never met before but whom Beckett had introduced as being Steven Langley, Royce's partner on the job for some years, had been the only mourners, along with Beckett herself. The boys and Montgomery had worn their dress uniforms with a black mourning band across their badges, a gesture of respect for a former cop, no matter how things had ended, and Beckett herself had kept the black mourning band across her own badge for a couple days, had only removed it on the one week anniversary of Royce's death.

"She mentioned that. She told me, too, about all you did to help her solve that case in LA."

Now wasn't the time to make a quip about a _Heat Wave_ set visit so Castle only said, "I was happy to help her. I've been to LA quite a few times for book signings and such so I'm fairly familiar with the area." And of course Meredith lived there so he had needed to accompany Alexis on a few visits out there over the years but he didn't mention that. It belatedly occurred to him that he was glad to have had the chance to spend those couple days in LA with Beckett because it meant that now, he would associate LA with her, with the vivid mental image of Beckett emerging from the pool like the sexy siren that she was.

He forcibly yanked his mind away from the memory. He was with Kate's _father_ ; he could _not_ think about Kate like that.

"Well, I know Katie really appreciated it."

Castle smiled softly, his heart warming, and he thought not for the first time that he really would do just about anything for Kate. For the way she'd smiled at him. "I'm just glad I could help."

There was another interruption as the server returned with their meals and their conversation paused for a little while as they each busied themselves eating for a few minutes before Jim broke it by asking, "And how is Alexis doing, aside from looking forward to her prom?"

"Alexis is doing well, busy with studying for her AP exams. I don't know if Kate's told you yet but Alexis has decided to go to Stanford for college."

"Well, Stanford is an excellent school," Jim commented. "But I thought Alexis was a junior. It seems a little early for her to have already decided where she'll be going to college."

Castle allowed himself to make a face. "That's what I keep saying but, well, Alexis apparently plans to graduate early and she's applying to Stanford for early decision so this is all happening fast."

"That's impressive. Well, I know Alexis is a good student so I'm sure she should have no difficulty in being admitted to any college she might choose to go to."

That reminded him. There was something he wanted to ask. He had the sudden, rather belated realization that after all, Jim Beckett would be the perfect person to talk to about Alexis leaving because he had gone through it himself. If anyone could give him advice on how to deal with a daughter going across the country for college, it was Jim. "I just wish she hadn't decided on a school so far away. How did you manage to let Kate go to college on the other side of the country? I'm having trouble coming to terms with the very idea of Alexis leaving for college at all, let alone going to college thousands of miles away."

Jim gave a rueful little laugh. "I don't remember being given much choice in the matter. The only school in New York that Katie applied to was NYU and she never seriously considered going there, at least not then." Jim broke off abruptly, his face changing for a moment.

Castle remembered that Kate had transferred to NYU after her mother's death and inwardly kicked himself for stumbling on a subject that would remind Jim of the worst days of his life.

Jim looked down and then took a gulp of water before he went on, his expression and his voice strictly controlled. "At the time, Katie was all about adventures and after spending her entire life in New York, she wanted to try something different, which meant going far away from home for college."

Castle's heart pinched a little at the mental image of the young Katie, before Johanna's death had made her so cautious, the one who had been fearless, maybe even reckless. Kate was the bravest person he had ever met but she had suffered too much, seen too many lives changed forever, not to approach life with caution now. It was part of the wall she had mentioned to him, the shield of professionalism and emotional reticence that she used to keep a distance from anything that might hurt her. She had let him in, trusted him, but he knew that part of her was still scared.

He pushed the emotion aside before he could get bogged down in it. "I don't know how you did it. I practically had a breakdown when Alexis told me she planned to go to Stanford."

Jim made a small sympathetic grimace. "I can imagine. It wasn't easy for me either but Johanna—" he broke off again at the mention of his wife's name but then went on, his voice somewhat softer, "Johanna helped. She reminded me that in spite of her little rebellions, Katie was smart and responsible and college was the time to let her leave the nest."

"That's pretty much what Kate said to me when I was fretting over Alexis's decision."

Jim managed a smile. "Well, I guess some things just don't change. I'd listen to Katie. She's always right, you know," Jim joked, although his humor didn't quite reach his eyes.

Castle laughed. "Believe me, Jim, if there's one thing I've learned from having both Alexis and Kate around, to say nothing of my mother, it's that they're always right."

Jim laughed as well and this time, the amusement was real. "There you are, Rick. You've learned the lesson I learned a long time ago, that arguing with a couple strong-willed women like Johanna and Katie would get me nowhere." Jim sobered. "Seriously, though, Rick, I won't lie and say that it was easy to let Katie go so far away. But it's part of being a parent as I'm sure you've experienced yourself. You don't stop worrying but children grow up and as scary as it can be, it's an amazing thing to see too."

"It is amazing," he agreed softly. As much as he worried about Alexis, as upset as he honestly was at the idea of Alexis leaving, seeing Alexis grow up, seeing the unique and incredible person she was turning out to be—there was nothing like it in the world.

"Alexis should be just fine, Rick. From all I've seen and from what I've heard from Katie, Alexis has a good head on her shoulders and both feet firmly on the ground. I don't imagine Alexis will get into trouble, even if she does go to college in California. And Stanford is a great school. The campus is beautiful and I know Katie enjoyed her time there. I still remember her telling Johanna about the fun she and some friends of hers had watching this one spaceship show—I forget the name of it…"

Castle grinned in spite of himself. " _Nebula 9_?" he suggested.

"Yes, that was it." Jim eyed Castle. "I take it you're familiar with the show, Rick. Did you like it too?"

Castle laughed. "I'm familiar with the show but I certainly didn't like it. Kate and I once had a, shall we say, intense discussion over its merits."

Jim laughed. "Oh, did you? Yes, well, Katie always did enjoy that sort of show and when that _Nebula 9_ show came out, she just loved it. Johanna joked that she thought the show might make Katie decide to be an astronaut."

Castle chuckled.

Jim shook his head a little. "I never did understand what Katie saw in those spaceship shows."

Castle opened his mouth to explain the perennial fascination of sci-fi but then stopped himself. He was absolutely not going to lecture Kate's dad on the merits of sci-fi. "They're amusing to watch," he answered blandly instead.

Jim looked amused. "Nice try, Rick, but you don't need to pretend not to like science fiction. I know you do. Katie's told me stories about your love of _Star Wars_."

Castle grinned. "I would say that anything you've heard about me is exaggerated but I think we both know that's not true."

Jim laughed. "Exactly. My daughter is not overly given to hyperbole. She hasn't been since she was in high school."

"Speaking of high school, Kate arranged a break-up night for Alexis this past week when Alexis and Ashley briefly broke off their relationship. She said it was something her mother had done for her."

Jim blinked, a faint frown flickering across his face, before it cleared. "A break-up night? Oh yes, I think I remember. I never did find out exactly what happened that day to make Katie so upset, just that it involved some teenage idiot who'd hurt her feelings. I know she talked about it with Johanna." He paused, his expression softening, becoming melancholy, wistful, as he went on, "Katie never liked to let anyone see her cry but Johanna used to be the only person Katie would talk to when she was upset."

Oh god. Castle had guessed that from what he knew about Kate but it was different hearing it. It was, perhaps, the most terrible and tragic part of Johanna Beckett's death, he suddenly thought, that in so many ways, Johanna Beckett herself had probably been the one person who could have best comforted both Kate and Jim in their grief. The young Katie, who had never let anyone except her mother see her cry, who had become the adult Kate, who still didn't like to let anyone see her cry, whose first instinct when hurting was to retreat into solitude. His heart hurt.

"Katie has you now, though, Rick, and I'm glad of that," Jim added with a ghost of a smile. "She's told me that having you around is always a comfort."

What could he possibly say to that? "That means a lot to me," he finally said lamely. It meant everything. He thought about the night Royce had died, about the way Kate had called for him after she had read Royce's letter, about holding her as she cried. Painful and so poignant and precious, to know that Kate Beckett would let him see her cry. He thought about the couple days in LA and remembered the anniversary of Johanna Beckett's death this year. In January, Kate had still spent most of the day alone, had said she needed space from the night before. In LA, she had stayed with him, had let him comfort her almost from the beginning. How far they had come. How far _she_ had come since then…

"If I remember correctly, Katie and Johanna didn't let me join them for this break-up night insisting that it was a girls-only thing," Jim said, trying to sound cheerful. "Were you allowed to join Katie and Alexis for whatever this break-up night entailed?"

Castle smiled. "They let me stick around to be their errand boy, as Kate put it."

Jim chuckled and his amusement looked real. "Well, I hope it helped Alexis to feel better."

"It did." He hesitated. He never talked about Meredith or her maternal inadequacies with anyone except for Kate, a little bit, but he did want Jim to know at least a little of how much he appreciated Kate. "Kate has been really wonderful with Alexis. I know I lucked out with Alexis but even so, it's not always easy parenting a teenage daughter alone and Kate's helped a lot. It means more than I can say."

Jim's expression softened. "Katie's grown very fond of Alexis and from what I've seen of Alexis, I can understand why."

Castle tried, with limited success, not to preen. "I really did luck out with Alexis." He laughed briefly. "I know I'm thankful every day that Alexis is nothing like I was as a teenager!"

Jim laughed. "Well, as someone who was the father to a wild child teen, I can understand that. I know Katie will kill me if I tell you some of the things she got up to in her high school years but suffice to say that I got a lot grayer while she was in high school."

Castle forced himself not to pout. Jim Beckett was the world's living expert on the teenage Kate Beckett's exploits and here, they'd both been intimidated into silence. _'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis, true,_ his literary mind lamented. "As curious as I am about those stories, I won't pry and I entirely understand why you won't tell. I'm too familiar with the Wrath of Beckett to risk it," he quipped.

Jim chuckled. "The Wrath of Beckett, that's a catchy phrase."

Castle grinned. "Well, I am a writer, Jim." He changed the subject, deciding they had talked about Beckett enough in her absence. "So, I see that the Mets have been playing pretty well lately."

He could hardly believe himself for saying it but needs must. He was not much of a sports fan. He'd spent his childhood in theatres, not on sports fields, and he couldn't catch a ball to save his life. He'd learned to follow sports at least casually simply because it was such a necessary social lubricant among men and it helped that he was able to meet a lot of the City's famous sports heroes, like Joe Torre and Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. And in the last year, he'd made a concerted effort to learn more about baseball in general and the Mets in particular, partly for Beckett and rather more for Jim Beckett's sake. (If learning about the Mets was the price to pay to make the man he hoped would be his father-in-law like him more, so be it. He was seriously considering buying season tickets to Mets games at Citi Field to give to Jim and, by extension, Beckett herself for Christmas this year. More than that, it belatedly occurred to him that the next time Joe Torre was in town with the Dodgers to play the Mets, he should get tickets to a game and then arrange for Jim to meet Joe Torre in person. And as a bonus, he'd probably get to see Beckett get adorably flustered again.)

Jim brightened up immediately, straightening in his chair, at this new subject.

Castle nodded and listened and made a mental note that baseball really was the subject, aside from Kate herself, that Jim Beckett appeared to like to talk about the most. Well, he didn't mind. He had grown to appreciate the subtleties and the long history of the game.

From talk about baseball, conversation shifted and became more general with Castle reflecting, not for the first time, that he was so glad that he and Jim got along. If Jim Beckett had been anything like Sheila Blaine… He gave an inward shudder at the very thought. Sheila's poorly-concealed (at best) disdain had not, precisely, been the reason he and Kyra hadn't worked out but it hadn't helped either. And after that, he had never needed to deal with in-laws before as Meredith's parents had lived in California before they'd passed away and had, therefore, not been around. Gina's parents had not really been a part of her life at all so he had only met them at the wedding and then not seen them since. It would obviously be different with Kate and Jim because of how close the two were. Well, if he needed another reason to know he was the luckiest man in the world, it was the realization that he had no qualms about Jim Beckett becoming his father-in-law and part of his family.

With his nervousness gone and conversation more casual and not touching on more painful subjects, the rest of lunch passed pleasantly and quickly.

Jim thanked him for lunch rather more profusely than necessary but Castle shrugged off the thanks. "No, thank you, Jim. After everything, lunch is the least I could do."

"Still, Rick, you've paid for basically every meal we've had since we met," Jim protested weakly.

"And I'm happy to do so. Really. Knowing I have your blessing, well, I can never thank you enough for that."

As he'd expected, that silenced Jim's protests.

"Do you have any idea when you'll ask?" Jim queried as they left the restaurant.

"I haven't decided that yet," Castle admitted. He hadn't decided anything about the proposal yet, except that it needed to be intimate, the way Kate had said she wanted it to be. All he knew was that he wanted it to be perfect. It was the most important question he would ever ask, to the woman he loved more than he'd imagined was possible.

And he was a writer. He could not simply present her with the ring and ask _will you marry me_. He might not need someone else to play Cyrano for him but he wanted his proposal to be worthy of his status as a writer and more importantly, express even a fraction of what Kate meant to him.

"Well, good luck, Rick." Jim shook Castle's hand. "And Rick?"

"Yes?"

Jim hesitated almost infinitesimally and then went on, quietly, "I know Katie loves you."

Castle lost his breath. Of course he knew that too but to hear it from her father… "I love her too."

"You'll do just fine, Rick. I'm sure I'll be seeing you again soon."

"Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Jim."

Castle watched Jim Beckett walk away and then turned to head in the direction of the loft.

He was aware that he was probably grinning like a loon but he couldn't help it. He had Jim Beckett's blessing to propose to Kate. And he was returning to the home he shared with the three people he loved the most in the world, his somewhat overbearing but loving mother, his brilliant daughter, and the extraordinary love of his life.

* * *

"Please, Beckett?" Castle whined.

Beckett gave him a look that should by rights have scorched a hole through him except that he'd developed something of an immunity to Beckett's looks. (Okay, only to some of them. The full force of a Beckett glare, well, that would make all the immortal gods of Olympus tremble in fear and he, as a lesser mortal, was certainly no exception.)

"No, Castle, for the tenth time, you may not use my gun to threaten Ashley when he shows up."

"Even if it's unloaded?"

"Castle."

"It's not like I'm planning to actually shoot him or anything." He was only partially kidding. He might like Ashley for the most part but he was a teenage boy and Castle distrusted all teenage boys on principle. He'd been a teenage boy and he remembered very well what he'd been like at that age. (Raising a teenage daughter was making him repent of every unregenerate thought he'd ever had as a teenager.) He remembered, too, what his thoughts had been leading up to prom—that is, before he'd learned that he wasn't going to be able to go to prom at all—and suffice to say that his interest in Audra Dobson had not been based on her brains and his intentions would not have pleased Audra's father. No. If Ashley's thoughts about prom resembled that of the normal teenage boy about prom in any way, well, Castle reserved the right to rescind his promise not to shoot the boy.

"No, Castle."

"Besides," he grumbled rather petulantly, "two years ago, I had this brilliant severed-head thing planned but Alexis spoiled my fun and wouldn't let me use it. I shouldn't be denied participating in such a time-honored tradition of scaring one's teenage daughter's prom date."

"Time-honored tradition or no, you are not using my gun to threaten poor Ashley. Besides, Castle, you already scared Ashley the first time you met him by waving a gun around. You've hit your quota."

Poor Ashley, his foot! Castle snorted a little. "Where is that written that I can only scare my daughter's boyfriend once with a gun?"

"It's Beckett's Law," she answered half-flippantly. "Now, Castle, I'm going upstairs to help Alexis finish getting ready. If Ashley arrives before we come down and I see that you've taken my gun out of the safe, I swear I'll take it and shoot you myself."

The sad thing about dating a cop was that she was, of course, entirely capable of disarming him and shooting him. He gave an exaggerated, beleaguered sigh. "Oh, fine, Beckett, spoil all my fun, why don't you."

She gave him an unsympathetic look. "You'll survive," she said dryly as she went up the stairs. "Just pick out a movie to watch tonight, why don't you, Castle?"

He huffed a little as he went down on his haunches before his extensive DVD collection. A movie, or movies, to watch while Alexis was at prom.

He and Beckett had decided to make a casual night in of it—or rather, he had decided and Beckett had agreed, not wanting to go anywhere in the off chance that anything happened at the prom that made Alexis feel uncomfortable. He had told Alexis repeatedly—to the point that she was practically mouthing the words along with him now—that she should call him and he'd be there as fast as humanly possible (and he might have implied that he'd make Beckett use the gumball) if anything—by which he rather meant Ashley—made her uncomfortable. The prom was being held in the ballroom of some swanky hotel downtown and while there would be teachers present as chaperones, the fact that it was a hotel meant that there'd be plenty of places for kids to sneak off and escape supervision.

He grimaced at the thought. He should reconsider letting Alexis go; strict helicopter parenting had a lot to say for it.

Not that Beckett would let him do any such thing.

That thought somewhat brightened his mood, oddly enough, at the implication that he wasn't alone in parenting Alexis, not anymore. He had someone to rein in his over-protective impulses, someone to help distract him when his daughter was going to prom.

Which reminded him, he should pick out a movie.

He pulled out _The Killer_ and then added _Hard-Boiled_ for good measure. Watching some violence would distract him from the fact that his little girl was at the prom surrounded by teenage boys and that she was planning to graduate early in a matter of months and leave for college on the other side of the country.

"Castle, she's ready."

He heard Beckett's voice from upstairs and whirled around, almost overbalancing before he steadied himself only to feel a little unsteady, again, for reasons that had nothing to do with his balance.

For the first time ever, he didn't notice Kate, hovering in the background, had eyes only for his daughter coming slowly down the stairs.

Alexis. _Oh god._ She looked… beautiful. But what really made him feel as if he'd been hit in the head with a two-by-four was the fact that she also looked… older.

Alexis, Kate, and his mother had sternly refused to show him Alexis's dress last weekend after they'd bought it, Kate only saying that he needed to wait and see. He'd waited and now he saw.

The dress was a light green, the color of a new leaf in springtime, and it made for a perfect contrast with her hair, styled simply, with half of it pinned up while the rest of it hung naturally past her shoulders. The dress and hair alone would probably have been enough—she looked like the embodiment of springtime. It was her makeup that really threw him for a loop. He wasn't sure exactly what she'd done with it but it made her look older, at least 18, but for the first time in her life, he thought she could pass for 21.

His heart clenched. He had a sudden vivid flash of memory of a young Alexis scampering down the stairs in what she'd called a "spinny skirt" and a tiara to come to a stop before him and spin around, making her skirt flare. _Daddy, daddy, watch me!_

And then he blinked and the vision was gone, his little girl gone and replaced by this frighteningly mature-looking young woman.

She'd reached the bottom of the stairs and gave him a small, half-tentative smile and in that smile, he saw his little girl still. "Well, Dad, what do you think?"

He forced a smile and managed to make his frozen feet move so he could press a careful kiss to her forehead. "I think you look beautiful, pumpkin."

She smiled. "Kate helped me with my makeup. Does it look okay?"

"You look like you could be in college right now," he answered honestly.

He wasn't sure if he meant that as a good thing but Alexis beamed. "Thank you, Dad."

He felt Beckett's presence by his side. "I told you, you look just perfect, Alexis. Don't worry."

As if on cue, that was when the doorbell sounded and he almost winced at the way Alexis's expression lit up even more with anticipation. His little girl was so happy— _in love_ , a voice in his head spoke up—and as much as he loved seeing her so happy, he just couldn't feel quite resigned to how fast she was growing up, that she was lighting up like this over a boy.

Beckett nudged him and then slipped her hand into his arm to half-tug, half-accompany him to the door.

Ashley was waiting, dressed up in a tux and looking both more formal and happier than Castle had ever seen him. "Hi, Mr. Castle, Detective Beck—" He broke off abruptly, his eyes fixed on a point behind Beckett and Castle realized that Alexis had come into view. "Alexis… hi," Ashley said, his tone an odd mixture of shyness and awe and happiness. It was endearing and Castle felt his mood softening in spite of himself.

Prom, teenage boy, he reminded himself sternly.

He felt Kate nudge him again and they stepped back from the door, letting Ashley step inside and Alexis come forward.

"Hi, Ash," Alexis greeted quietly.

"I have something for you," Ashley said, a little awkwardly, as he held up a clear plastic box with a white corsage in it.

"Oh, thanks, Ash," Alexis said quietly, offering him a hand.

He fumbled a little with the box and Beckett took pity on him and stepped forward to take the box out of his hand once he'd taken out the corsage. It was a wrist corsage, a simple band that could be slipped on over Alexis's hand.

Castle abruptly came out of his brief stupor. "Wait, wait, we need to take a few pictures." He turned, looking. He knew he'd taken out his actual camera just for this purpose. Beckett was the one who picked the camera up from the side table and handed it to him. He snapped a few pictures of Alexis and Ashley and then a few of Alexis alone and then one of Alexis with Kate and then Kate stepped in and took pictures of him with Alexis and one of him with Alexis and Ashley.

The pictures taken, Alexis and Ashley left, already holding hands and looking almost painfully glad to be together again. And oh god, the image of the two of them, holding hands, with Alexis looking so grown up and Ashley in his tux...

His unruly imagination presented him with a sudden picture of Alexis in a long white gown standing next to some faceless young man in a tux and his heart stuttered in his chest.

Nope, not thinking about it. That way lay a coronary.

"Have fun, you two," Kate said as she waved them off.

"Bye, Dad, Kate," Alexis smiled. "I should be home by 11."

He managed a smile. "Remember you can call if you need anything. Have fun."

He stood frozen in place as Ashley and Alexis disappeared into the elevator as Kate quietly closed the door, his eyes suddenly and irrationally stinging. His little girl… God, when had she grown up so much?

Kate came up to him. "Castle, are you crying?"

"No," he lied. "There's… dust in my eyes."

Kate's lips quirked a little and he knew she knew he was lying—of course she did. But she didn't call him on it, only cupped his face in her hands and rose up on her toes to kiss him briefly.

And he was comforted.

She fell back onto her heels although she didn't move her hands. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he managed a little gruffly, lifting one hand to capture her fingers and pressing a kiss to her palm before lowering their joined hands. "Just… she looks so grown-up."

"She's not leaving the nest yet, Castle," she placated.

"I know. I just… for the first time, she really looked old enough to be in college and it just startled me."

She only kissed his chin quickly and then turned towards the main room, half-tugging him along with her by their joined hands. "So what movie did you pick out?"

" _The Killer_ and _Hard-Boiled_ since we should have time for both, if that's okay with you."

"A John Woo marathon, nice," Beckett approved.

He blinked at her in some surprise. "You like John Woo?"

She grinned at him. "The bloodier the better."

"You are so hot," he blurted out unthinkingly. Dressing up as Gene Simmons for Halloween, liking violent movies, and being able to meet and match wits, to say nothing of literary quotations, with him—yeah, she was definitely the perfect woman.

She laughed. "Do you want to get the popcorn and some wine while I get the movie started?"

"Sounds like a plan."

In just a few minutes, he settled onto the couch and smiled as Kate promptly curled up next to him.

The movie started and after a little while, Kate shifted until she was leaning against him, reaching up to settle his arm around her shoulders. She was so much more given to touching, not to say snuggling, than he would ever have expected. And he loved that too. Loved that she still surprised him.

He turned his head and pressed a kiss to her hair. "Hey, Beckett?"

"Hmm?"

"I still love you even though you didn't let me use your gun to scare Ashley."

She huffed a soft laugh. "Good. Now be quiet. I want to watch the movie."

He rested his cheek against her hair, the faint scent of cherries drifting up to his nose, and felt all the tension draining out of his body.

And he was happy.

 _To be continued…_

 _A/N 2: The second part of this chapter doesn't serve much of a purpose but I admit to really loving the scenes in S1's "Death in the Family" where Alexis goes to prom with Owen and wanted to essentially recreate it with Ashley this time and the additional twist of Beckett being involved._

 _As always, all reviews are very much appreciated, especially the guest reviewers whom I can't thank directly._


	33. Chapter 32: Knockout 1

Author's Note: The first of four chapters set during "Knockout." And I will start out right now by saying that I am not sure it's possible to do justice to the episode but one can but try. Obviously, there'll be some familiar dialogue ahead.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 32_

"Guys, have I got something to show you!" Castle enthused before they had so much as reached her desk in the precinct.

"Unless it's a brand-new Ferrari you just bought me, I ain't interested," Esposito retorted.

Kate suppressed a smile. Castle had practically chivvied her out the door this morning, so eager was he to show off the finalized cover for the Derrick Storm graphic novel, the mock-up of which had been delivered by special messenger yesterday. Kate had been thankful for it because its arrival had quite effectively distracted Castle entirely from his fretting over Alexis's decision to graduate early and go to Stanford. Alexis's prom on Saturday, with its reminder of how quickly she was growing up, had not helped.

Castle made a face at Espo but ignored him. "Okay, then you won't get an autographed copy of my new graphic novel."

"You wrote a graphic novel?" Ryan asked in some surprise.

"Not technically," Castle admitted. "But it is based on one of the greatest characters I ever created. You see, Wolverine, Batman, Betty and Veronica—sure, they were fine for their day. But there is a new sheriff on the spinner-rack and his name is… Derrick Storm."

With that dramatic reveal, Castle theatrically turned the cardboard mock-up around so the boys who had approached her desk could see it. "Advance art for _A Deadly Storm_ , the new graphic novel."

"Wow," Ryan grinned.

"That's pretty cool," Espo commented blandly.

Castle huffed. "It is _epic_ cool, is what it is."

Kate snorted. "Epic. Yeah, I think the X-Men's and Batman's places in the graphic novel pantheon are entirely safe."

Castle turned to give her a narrow-eyed look. "Don't be mean, Beckett. Besides," he added airily, "you're not going to spoil this for me. For someone who has loved comic books his entire life, this is a dream come true."

Kate couldn't help her smile. She didn't want to spoil this for him and she did understand his excitement. But of course, they were in the precinct and she had her professional reputation to maintain. Acting like a fangirl was not an option. "I know, Castle. I'm just saying, you're not exactly Stan Lee."

"I'll grant you that. There is only one Stan Lee. But he's been around for years. Derrick Storm's graphic novel career is just starting."

Kate only shook her head a little. His enthusiasm was irrepressible and though she wouldn't have said so out-loud, it was endearing.

"Say, Castle, what'd you mean when you said you didn't technically write this graphic novel?" Ryan asked.

Castle practically bounced over to the boys as he immediately started telling the story of how Black Pawn had pitched the idea of a graphic novel based somewhat loosely on the first Derrick Storm novel. (The difference in genres between a novel and a comic book obviously precluded the comic from being strictly accurate and that aside, they didn't want the story only to be a complete rehash of the book because then fewer people would be interested in buying the comic for the story.) Kate only half-listened since she already knew the backstory to this, letting the familiar tones of Castle's excited voice serve as background noise as she turned on her computer and started going through her inbox.

It was a paperwork day, with no active cases, so Kate desultorily went through the emails, mostly the routine reminder emails from One PP and other such things, part of the administrative work of being a cop.

The sound of her phone ringing cut through the muted noise in the bullpen and she picked up the phone. "Beckett."

Only to freeze, straightening up, at the news she heard.

" _What?_ "

Her voice had risen but she didn't notice, only belatedly realized it when Castle broke off his conversation with the boys and returned to stand next to her, obviously guessing from her voice that something was wrong.

She blindly, automatically reached out for him—Castle, the only solid thing in a world that seemed to be tilting under her feet—and gripped his arm as if she were drowning and he was a life-saver.

"How did it happen?" she demanded.

She felt cold suddenly, her insides trembling in immediate reaction, as she listened to Officer Ryker's somewhat shaken voice telling her what had happened.

Oh god. This was it.

"I understand… We'll look into it… Thank you for letting me know," Kate responded mechanically.

She hung up her phone with fingers that felt numb and for a moment, just stared at her desk unseeingly, reminding herself to breathe in and out.

"Beckett? Beckett, what is it? What happened?"

Castle's concerned voice tugged her back to reality and served to jerk her brain into action as she looked up and met his eyes. "That was a guard officer at the prison. Lockwood was transferred to general population this morning and he murdered Gary McCallister in his cell."

Castle's eyes flared wide, the color leaving his face. "What? I thought Lockwood was supposed to be kept in administrative segregation indefinitely."

"He was," she answered grimly. Answering the question somehow served to galvanize her thought process. She snapped her gaze to Esposito and Ryan, who had obviously heard what she'd told Castle and were standing at attention. "Espo, someone must have pulled some strings to get Lockwood out of ad-seg. Pull the paperwork for the transfer and find out who. Ryan, you can start looking into which prison personnel were on duty this morning and could have been involved."

They both nodded. "On it."

Determination and adrenaline were flooding into her system, now that her training was kicking in, and she released Castle's arm to pace impatiently around her desk. This was it, the break they'd been waiting for. She and Castle had basically shelved her mother's case for the last couple months because there had been nothing new. She had pulled out the file they had compiled a few times, usually after one of her visits to the prison to see Lockwood, worried over it in her mind on the occasional sleepless nights like a dog gnawing at a bone, but to no avail.

She had gone to see Lockwood in prison five times in the last four months, the last time just over a week ago, and the man had been his usual immovable self, surveying her with those inhumanly ice-blue eyes. She faced down killers every day but Lockwood was something else, a killing automaton, no human emotions whatsoever, a true sociopath. And that chilled her. This wasn't like most murders that were based on human emotion and psychology, revenge, fear, anger, even love. With Lockwood, they had none of that to go on, only cold-blooded calculation. So this was the break they needed, something new to break the uneasy stalemate they had been in. A new victim, a new trail to follow.

With her mother's killer at the end of it.

This was it.

"Beckett, I'm sorry."

Castle's voice jerked her out of her thoughts and she blinked at him. Sorry? "For what?"

He looked unhappy but he went on. "Lockwood kills Raglan and he shanks McCallister, both of them ex-cops who had something to do with your mother's murder. It's like he's cutting off all avenues of your investigation."

She shook her head. "Castle, he's not cutting them off. He's giving us new ones. I've gone to that prison five times in the last four months to have a staring contest with the devil and the devil just blinked." Didn't he see? Didn't he realize? "This is exactly what I've been looking for. This is it, Castle. This is my chance."

"Beckett…" He hesitated and she looked at him.

"What, Castle?"

"I just..." he trailed off and she watched expressions she couldn't quite read flit across his face as he struggled to find words, worry, apprehension, tenderness, sympathy, fear, determination. "Just… be careful, okay, Beckett?" he finished, a little lamely.

She glanced around and then stepped in closer to him, still keeping a somewhat professional distance between their bodies but still close enough that her words couldn't be overheard by anyone around. She understood his concern and on a sudden impulse, or inspiration, repeated his words to her from so long ago. "It's different this time. We have good leads this time, we have strong leads. And I don't have to do it alone. We'll do it together."

She saw the recognition of his earlier words spark in his eyes, the set of his lips softening. "Together?" There was the faintest hint of a question in his tone, a hint of uncertainty in it. After all, in spite of everything—or because of everything—in this one area of her life, he wasn't quite sure of her. He really had changed, grown up, from the man who had first pried into her mother's case against her wishes and without telling her.

 _I will do anything that you need, including nothing, if that's what you want._

It had been a promise and even now, more than a year later, he was keeping his promise. When it came to her mother's case, she knew he would never act impulsively again, wouldn't overstep.

And he would keep her from going down the rabbit hole again.

It was why she trusted this man so much. This man over anyone else in her life. Trusted him, believed in him the way she believed in the sun rising in the east or in the pull of gravity.

"You're my partner, Castle. Of course we'll do this together. We're like Starsky and Hutch or Turner and Hooch, remember?" The words were flippant but she knew he would remember and would understand.

His expression softened, his eyes suddenly bright in spite of the lingering worries clouding his expression. Yes, he understood.

They would follow these new trails together.

* * *

Castle felt like his heart and lungs were in a vise. Had been in a vise for the last two days since he'd first heard the news about Lockwood and McCallister and everything about Johanna Beckett's case had gone to hell in a hand-basket.

His only comfort—such as it was—was that Beckett was still with him, at least physically. After Lockwood's aborted arraignment that had turned into a prison break, after she had dealt with the courthouse security and set Esposito and Ryan and every uniform in sight on the trail of the helicopter, she had returned to the loft with him. She had gently but firmly brushed away his mother's and Alexis's concerned questions and retreated immediately into their bedroom. He had assuaged both his mother's and Alexis's worries as best he could without actually saying anything specific; he didn't want Alexis knowing the real complexity and seriousness of Johanna Beckett's case. He didn't want that kind of darkness touching her life. But seeing the worry clouding her usually clear blue eyes, he had only been able to tug her into his arms and hold her and pray to whatever higher powers might be listening that he and Beckett would be able to shield Alexis from the worst realities.

When he'd ventured into their bedroom, it was to find Beckett already in bed. He hadn't said anything, only completed his nightly routine and joined her in their bed. He had let one hand fall to rest gently on her shoulder, unsure of himself, and had been immediately comforted when she had scooted backwards, towards him until he had been spooned around her, reaching up to tug his arm around her.

But she hadn't talked and he hadn't tried to push and slowly, he had felt the tension seep out of her body as her breathing evened out and the knowledge that she had fallen asleep had allowed him to sleep too.

But then this morning, she had awoken obscenely early and had not stayed to have breakfast with him and Alexis. She had told him she was heading into the precinct to see what had been found out about Lockwood's escape, but that he should stay and have breakfast with Alexis and that she would see him later.

And all day today, she had been in full Detective Beckett mode, without a hint of softness to be seen, her jaw set with all the determination she was capable of.

He understood. He did. With all that had happened, she was spiraling, felt like she'd lost control—which, of course, in a real sense, she had, was just chasing after whoever was behind this whole thing. So he understood.

And yet, he couldn't help but feel a little flicker of hurt and, more than that, a much deeper tug of worry. Because Beckett might say she was fine but he also knew that when it came to her mother's case, Beckett's judgment was compromised.

But she hadn't retreated to her apartment, had still slept beside him in his arms last night.

She had asked him not to let her lose herself and he had no intention of letting her do so but at this point, he wasn't sure if she was, if this was Beckett's usual drive, albeit more intense than usual, or if she really had slipped on blinders and was falling into the rabbit hole.

She had set Ryan to pulling all the surveillance footage from around the hangar where they'd found the abandoned chopper and was now frowning at the fresh murder board about her mother's case in the precinct.

"Beckett," he ventured cautiously.

She glanced back at him. "Yeah?"

"It's getting late. You want to take a break, pick it up again with fresh eyes in the morning?" It was well after 8 pm. They had eaten a very quick dinner earlier, with Beckett only nibbling at half a sandwich, and Castle had tried to gently nudge her into eating more but had given up after she'd given him a look. At least she had eaten something. It wasn't unprecedented for Beckett to skip meals entirely when she was deep in the middle of a case, which was why he usually made it his mission to feed Beckett on a regular basis.

"Actually, Castle, I think I'm going to stay here a little longer, go through some more of the old files about Raglan's known associates. You go home and spend some time with Alexis."

Oh no. He didn't like the sound of this. "But Beckett…"

"Castle." Her tone softened just a little. "I'm not—I won't be good company right now. I don't want Alexis to see me like this but you should go or she'll worry more."

The mention of Alexis, her concern for his daughter, made a tendril of warmth sprout up inside his chest for the first time in two days. Her stance, her expression, was still all Beckett, but in her words, he heard Kate, _his_ Kate, again. And it reassured him more than just about anything else could have in that moment.

"If you're sure…"

"I'll be fine, Castle. Go see Alexis. I'll see you later."

"Try not to be too late," he blurted out and then inwardly winced. Beckett would not appreciate such a parental-sounding injunction but he was worried about her, damn it, and he still didn't like the fact that she was sending him home early. She hadn't done that in months.

He thought she might snap at him but all she said was, "Yeah."

He hesitated, still, not sure if she was only acknowledging his words or agreeing to it but he could hardly ask her, and after a few seconds, he decided to give in. He did want to see Alexis, reassure her, and then, if Beckett stayed too late, well, there was no rule that he couldn't return to the precinct and persuade her to return home with him. "See you later, Beckett."

He only got an absent half-wave and a mumble in response and he finally, reluctantly left and returned to the loft.

He wasn't exactly comforted as Alexis's first question when he walked in was "Where's Kate?"

"She's looking into a few things at the precinct but she'll be home in a little while, sweetie," he reassured her, forcing a small smile as he passed a caressing hand down Alexis's red hair.

Alexis didn't look particularly comforted. "Is Kate okay?"

The question stabbed at him but he hid it as much as possible. "She's just stressed but she'll be okay," he answered and could only pray that he was telling the truth. "Kate's tough." That, at least, was true.

Alexis's lips twitched just a little. "I know, but…" She sighed and hesitated and then said quietly, "I can't imagine what it must be like for her, solving murders and bringing closure to all of those families, but never for herself."

Oh, his little girl, growing up so fast, with such a kind heart. He reached out and squeezed her hand briefly but he sighed at the same time. Because of course Alexis's words went straight to the heart of Beckett's wounds, her vulnerability, and why she was so susceptible to falling down the rabbit hole. Because she solved other cases all the time and, because she was so good at what she did, she almost never had to give up on any other case. In all the years he'd been working with her, the Cavanaugh case in the beginning had probably been the only one where Beckett had not persuaded the DA to bring charges and it remained on the official record as an unclosed case. They might have known what had happened to both Cavanaughs but they just didn't have the evidence to get a conviction. Aside from that one, though, she always solved the case. Except when it came to her mother's case.

"It's easier in my books," he answered after a moment. "The just are rewarded, the wicked are punished. Unfortunately, real life isn't that easy."

"Yeah, I know, Dad," Alexis half-sighed. "I just—"

Her words were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell. He frowned a little. He wasn't expecting anyone.

He patted Alexis's arm and got up to answer the door, only to pause, feeling the vise-like grip around his heart tighten just a little at the sight of Jim Beckett. "Jim!"

"Hi, Rick. Sorry to bother you at this hour with no notice," Jim said rather perfunctorily.

"No, don't worry about it," he demurred. "You're always welcome. Come in."

"Hello, Alexis. I hear you've finished your AP exams for the year. Congratulations," Jim greeted Alexis with a wan attempt at a smile.

"Hi, Mr. Beckett, and thank you." Alexis glanced at him. "I'll be in my room, Dad. I have some homework to finish up. It was nice to see you again, Mr. Beckett."

"Same here, Alexis."

"Can I get you something to drink, water, coffee?" Castle offered as Alexis disappeared upstairs.

"Just some water, thanks, Rick."

Castle dutifully handed Jim a glass of water and then sat down across from him.

"I talked to Katie," Jim began after taking a quick sip.

Castle nodded. Yes, he had guessed that. There was no other reason for Jim to appear on his doorstep, unannounced, at this hour of the night.

"She said that something happened, that this man who killed John Raglan back in January escaped," Jim went on. He paused and then went on. "She insisted she was fine but I know my daughter and her voice…" Jim trailed off, his gaze lowering to focus on his glass of water for a moment, before he looked back up to meet Castle's eyes. "I know Katie doesn't like to worry me but I… How is she holding up, really?"

 _Oh, shit._ He knew how much Beckett hated to worry Jim and he understood, although she had never—would never—say that it was because she still feared that something would send Jim back into the bottle. But he was reasonably sure that Jim Beckett was stronger than Beckett believed, although he was aware that it was easy for him to say because he, after all, had never seen Jim when he was broken. "It's hard to tell because she doesn't flinch," he answered cautiously. "She's focused but I don't think she's drowning." Not yet, at least, he thought but couldn't bring himself to say.

Jim sighed a little. "But she's still at the precinct and you're here. She sent you home." It wasn't a question.

He inwardly winced. "I just left her at the precinct less than an hour ago. She said she didn't want Alexis to worry."

The set of Jim's lips eased a little. "Well, that's something."

There was another brief silence as Jim took another drink of water and turned the glass around in his hand for a moment before he set it down with a faint, decisive clink. "This man she's chasing, the one who killed Raglan—how dangerous is he?"

Damn it. For a split second, Castle seriously considered lying. Not too much—he wasn't going to say that Lockwood was a teddy bear—but just make him sound like any other killer that Beckett chased down every day. But he couldn't do it. He couldn't lie to this man, not now, not about this. "He's a trained killer," he answered reluctantly and succinctly.

Just like that, Jim seemed to age before his eyes. "What happens when she finds him?"

Castle didn't answer, couldn't force any words past the blockage in his throat. And they both knew the answer. When Beckett found Lockwood, one or the other would end up dead. Ridiculously, stupidly, a line from Harry Potter suddenly ran through his mind. _Neither can live while the other survives._

His heart twisted sharply. Oh god.

"She won't back down and I know Katie won't listen to me but I think she'll listen to you. She trusts you." His lips twisted a little in a rather wry grimace. "I don't expect it'll be easy; Katie's too stubborn for that. But please, Rick, try. Try and convince her that her life is worth more than her mother's death… For the sake of the future you both deserve."

Castle tried not to flinch, had to fight to breathe. He felt a momentary flare of utterly unjust and irrational anger at Jim; did the man not think he already knew what was at stake? Did he have to raise the pressure even more?

But no, he couldn't blame Jim. Jim was a father and he, of all people, understood what that meant. If it had been Alexis…

"I'll do everything I can," he managed to say, his voice a little gravelly with emotion.

Jim nodded. "That's all I ask. Thank you, Rick." He pushed himself to his feet. "I won't bother you any longer."

Castle stood up in turn. "It was no bother, Jim. You're sure you won't stay until Kate comes home?"

Jim shook his head, making a small face. "You and I both know that Katie won't be pleased to know we were talking about her like this."

Castle felt his lips twitch in a ghost of a smile. That was true enough. Beckett was not the sort to appreciate knowing that he and her father were talking like this, agreeing on things that affected her life behind her back, even if they were motivated by love.

Castle opened the front door for Jim and Jim turned to face him. "Thanks for talking to me."

"Of course."

Jim shook his hand and then pulled him in for a brief hug. "Take care, son, and good luck."

 _Son._ The word echoed in Castle's mind. He knew he was overreacting to what was a fairly common colloquial expression from an older man to a younger one but the paternal note in it, the implications of it, still tugged at something inside him. Less because of his own fatherlessness than because of all it represented about how Jim viewed him.

"Have a good night, Jim."

Castle sank down heavily on the couch, his gaze finding and settling on the framed picture on one of the shelves. The picture was recent, one his mother had taken after they had returned home from his birthday dinner, and it had become one of his favorite pictures, although he had pretended to grumble a little at having it placed in such a prominent position in the front room where just about everyone who entered the loft would see it. Beckett had just brought out his birthday cake and Alexis had teasingly put her old tiara from when she'd been little on his head to serve as his birthday crown. His mother had insisted on taking a picture of him wearing the tiara while flanked by Beckett and Alexis, both of whom had been laughing at him and his exaggeratedly beleaguered expression.

Castle's heart clenched. He had been so happy, never happier than when he was surrounded by his family, seeing his daughter and his partner laughing and enjoying themselves.

And now Beckett was at the precinct, without him, running down leads to try to find a trained, merciless killer. Risking her life, again, to catch her mother's killer.

He knew Beckett loved him, loved his family. But her mother's case was… the most important thing in Beckett's life, her mother's death the most formative event of her life, the catalyst that had changed everything and around which Beckett's life still largely revolved. Her mother's case, finding out the truth and getting justice for her mother, it was Beckett's guiding light, her _raison d'être_.

Beckett loved him. He knew that, believed it with everything in him.

He just wasn't sure Beckett loved him _enough_. Not when weighed against getting justice for her mother.

He flinched at the thought.

 _Convince her that her life is worth more than her mother's death._

Her life— _their_ lives, the life they'd been living and building together.

But could he make Beckett see it like that, when weighed against her mother's death? He honestly didn't know. Even after the last year of loving Beckett and being loved by her, he honestly didn't know—and that was terrifying him almost more than anything else.

Would she come home to him? He knew that Beckett, of old, had been known to nap in the break room of the precinct overnight when she didn't plan on sleeping long enough to make it worth it to go home or she might even choose to go to her apartment. Almost everything of her personal things, the smaller stuff, had been cleared out and either brought back here or put into storage alongside his mother's old stuff from years ago, but some of her clothes remained and all the furniture, certainly enough to allow Beckett to spend a night or two in her apartment.

It was nearly 10. If Beckett hadn't returned by 10:30, he decided, he would text her to see where she was and if she was still at the precinct, he would go back to the precinct and make her leave it. Somehow. Assuming he didn't end up getting shot for his troubles.

It was just after 10:20 when Beckett walked in the door.

"You're home," he blurted out and then could have kicked himself for the inane statement.

Her lips quirked faintly upwards in the closest thing to a smile he'd seen from her in two days and he decided he didn't care if he'd sounded like an idiot. "Hey, Castle."

He fought not to frown. Her voice sounded tired in a way he rarely heard. But she wasn't hiding her tiredness from him, which was something.

"Do you want anything? Tea?"

She shook her head as she went into his office and he followed her inside it only to feel a small chill go through him as she, for once, didn't lock her gun up in the safe, but left it out on one of the shelves, the one closest to the door of their bedroom.

Montgomery had put a protective detail on the loft and Castle had already talked to the usual security in the building and had paid extra to make sure that there would be additional security guards in the building 24/7 along with the usual doorman.

He hovered uncomfortably in the bedroom as Beckett completed her nightly routine, something tugging at his heart at how familiar it was to him now. He loved that he knew her nightly routine, loved all these little signs of the life they shared. She changed into a very familiar-looking red shirt, the same one he had given her when she had first stayed at the loft last year after her apartment had exploded. He had gradually realized that she only wore the shirt when she wanted reassurance or comfort but he had enough self-control not to comment on her choice of sleepwear aloud.

She slid into bed and then, for the first time, turned to look at him. "Are you coming to bed or are you just going to stand there?"

The words could have been teasing but her voice was tired enough, expressionless enough, that it sounded like a simple question.

He practically tripped over his own feet. "Yeah, I'm coming."

He changed and finished his own nightly routine and joined her on the bed. She had closed her eyes and seemed to be asleep, although he knew that she wasn't, just that she was trying to sleep. He slid in behind her and let one arm curve over her.

"Sleep, Beckett," he murmured.

He didn't think he'd be able to sleep, too worried over Beckett and this case and Jim's visit, but the next thing he knew he was jerking awake to find an empty bed. A flare of panic had him catapulting out of bed and stumbling out of his bedroom only to stop short, a wave of relief breaking over him, as he saw that his electronic story board was on, somewhat swiveled away from the bedroom. He couldn't see Beckett so he ventured around his desk to find her, curled up on the floor with the Beckett drawer of his desk open beside her. A flashlight was on but it was on the floor beside her and she wasn't looking through the drawer's contents, wasn't actively doing anything. She had drawn her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs and was resting her chin on one knee as she stared up at the murder board of her mother's case, now updated with the latest developments, much as she studied the murder boards in the precinct.

She didn't look around at him or acknowledge his presence but he knew she knew he was there—he wasn't stealthy and she was a detective, trained to be aware of her surroundings. He wasn't sure if she wanted to be alone but he couldn't simply go back to sleep so he sat down beside her.

She didn't talk but after a few minutes, she shifted until she was leaning against him and he felt a flood of relief as he slipped his arm around her shoulders, snugly tucking her against him.

It was a little while before she finally broke the silence to say, quietly, "I couldn't sleep."

There was another pause during which he didn't respond because what could he say to such a self-evident statement?

"I kept thinking about Lockwood, out there somewhere. He killed Raglan and McCallister and he's… free now. He got away…"

He inwardly flinched. Her tone was soft with desolation but underneath it all, he could hear determination, all the fierceness and drive which characterized Kate Beckett. The fierceness and drive that had first drawn him in, that he still admired and loved so much. But it was that same drive that was terrifying him now. Why was it that the very things that drew you to a person could also end up being the things that got between you? He had told her once that she was extraordinary because of the way she didn't back down, didn't give up, and he'd meant it and it was killing him because he didn't know how to make her see reason, didn't know how to keep her from falling down the rabbit hole without seeming to ask her to be less than what she was.

"Beckett…"

He trailed off. Oh god…

"Hmm?"

"Just try to get some sleep," he finished lamely. "A clear head will help."

He chickened out. He couldn't do it, not now. Could not have this fight with her—and he didn't kid himself that it wouldn't be a fight and was terrified that it would prove a fatal one for their relationship—not at this hour of the night, when the darkness was made for intimacy and for lovers.

And not when she was here, nestled against him.

No, he could not have this fight with her now. She might have asked him months ago to keep her from falling down the rabbit hole but he knew her too well to think she would listen to him easily now. Things had been different then. Lockwood had been in prison, their last lead basically over. It had been a stalemate and Beckett would have seen that too. This time, with Lockwood on the run, he would be asking Beckett to stop pursuing a known killer, not from a lack of evidence but out of fear for her own safety. She was a cop to her core; a threat to her was not a factor because otherwise there was no way she could do her job. That Lockwood was a different scale of threat entirely wasn't going to register, not when it involved her mother's case. It was going to be an uphill battle to convince her.

"I kept hoping the board would speak to me, that it would spark an idea for some new avenue of investigation," she murmured.

"Did it?"

She shook her head against his shoulder.

No, he could not have this fight with her now, when she was talking to him, at least to an extent. She was still with him, wasn't drowning. Not yet.

He turned his head to press his lips against her hair. "Come back to bed, Beckett."

She sighed softly. "Okay," she agreed.

He felt a surge of relief and of gratitude as he clambered to his feet. She closed the Beckett drawer and turned off the flashlight while he turned off the electronic story board.

And together they went back to bed.

She curled up against him, her head resting on his shoulder, one arm stretched across his chest. "I don't think I'll be able to fall asleep, Castle," she mumbled.

He understood what she meant, what she was asking for without actually asking. Knew her tone well enough by now to be able to recognize when she wanted a more physical way of soothing her into sleep or when she wanted him to talk her into sleep. She had admitted once that she liked the sound of his voice and although he had teased her and pretended to be offended that his talking to her put her to sleep, it was something he loved, that sometimes when she had a hard time quieting her thoughts enough to sleep, the sound of his voice could calm her.

He thought for a minute and then began, his voice barely above a whisper, to recite Poe's poem, "The Raven." "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…"

By the time the poem ended, he could tell from the weight of her body, the way her hand was lax against his chest, the steady sound of her breathing, that she was on her way to falling asleep. He went on, his voice lowering even further, to recite his repertoire of Poe poems he had memorized, finishing with "El Dorado," by which time he was sure she was finally, truly sleeping.

He lay there, soothing her occasional mumbles by stroking his hand down her hair, and then cataloguing every twitch of her body, her soft breaths, until eventually, he slid into sleep, although it could not be said that his dreams were restful.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: Thank you to everyone who's reviewed, followed, or added this story to their favorites._


	34. Chapter 33: Knockout 2

Author's Note: The second of four chapters set during "Knockout." This chapter gave me fits in writing it and I really have no idea how well it turned out so I'll simply leave it at that and let you all be the judge.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 33_

And then the next morning, everything went to hell. Again.

Ryan and Esposito had combed through the financials of everyone working at the prison until it led them to a guard, Officer Ryker, who Castle vaguely remembered meeting when he had accompanied Beckett to the prison the first time to confront Lockwood back in January. Beckett had cultivated a friendly relationship with the guards, Ryker and another one, Haskell, to keep her updated if anything changed with Lockwood but now to find out that Ryker had been involved pushed Beckett further.

Castle was starting to feel more and more like he was trapped in a waking nightmare as things started happening in double or triple-time, or so it felt, as Ryker's apartment proved to be a messy crime scene, Ryker having been shot through the head. Another broken thread to the man behind it all, this Dragon holding Lockwood's leash.

He knew the boys were starting to be concerned too, from the mild push-back they gave her as she snapped out orders to dig into every cop who had any connection at all to Raglan or McCallister.

"Beckett, we want him as bad as you," Ryan argued.

Castle inwardly winced and sure enough, that was what made Beckett snap, rounding on Ryan with the fire in her eyes that tended to appear in tough interrogations. "The hell you do! Nobody wants him as bad as I do! Nobody! So check it again!"

She stalked off.

"Beckett!" Castle tried, rather weakly.

He wasn't shocked when Beckett didn't respond, the force in her steps boding no good for anyone who might get in her way.

She was heading to the records room, he guessed, to intimidate, not to say harass, whichever poor, unfortunate soul was in charge of it right now so she could pore through every sheet of paper Raglan or McCallister had ever touched, everything with either of their names on it. He let her go, at least for now. She was in no state of mind to listen and he couldn't talk to her properly in the precinct anyway.

He and Esposito and Ryan exchanged uneasy, unhappy looks. Well, Esposito looked uneasy; he and Ryan were the ones who looked unhappy as well as uneasy.

It was going to be a long afternoon.

Esposito and Ryan went to the records room and brought back three boxes of old records concerning Raglan and McCallister.

"Beckett's got the other two boxes down there," Esposito mentioned briefly.

Castle sighed. "I figured."

They were looking for a very elusive needle in a very large haystack.

Castle could tell that neither Ryan nor Esposito were really expecting to find anything and Ryan did have a point that they'd been through these records before. But they all gamely dove into it.

The next hours lasted as long as Queen Victoria's reign—or so it felt. Castle found his mind wandering more than he wanted to admit, worry over Beckett edging in and disturbing his concentration. She was spiraling, all these broken threads.

They ordered in pizza for dinner and ate without pausing in their trawl through the records. Castle felt his heart pinch at the way Esposito practically inhaled four large slices of pizza, abruptly reminded of the way he and Beckett had laughed over Esposito's habit of eating like someone coming off a famine—god, had it really only been a couple weeks ago?

Castle sent Beckett a text message letting her know about the pizza but was bleakly unsurprised when it went unanswered.

"How is she?" Esposito asked, nodding at Castle's phone, out on the table.

Castle felt an insane urge to laugh hysterically and not out of amusement. Espo was asking him that? How the hell did he think she was? "She stormed off and hasn't said a word to any of us," he answered lamely.

"She's getting lost. She's an inch away from the rabbit hole," Esposito said grimly and that terrified Castle all over again. That Esposito, of all people, who had worked with Beckett the longest and who never, ever treated Beckett as having weaknesses, was worried over Beckett…

"She'll be fine. She always is," Castle forced himself to say, more because he wanted the words to be true than because he believed them, as if saying the words would make them come true. God, he hoped they would be true but right now, he wasn't sure of anything. And worse still, he thought Espo's estimate that Beckett was an inch away from the rabbit hole was being generous; if she wasn't actually falling down the rabbit hole, she was on the brink of it, certainly less than an inch away.

He looked back down at the file in front of him, his mind snagging on an oddity. The file had been altered.

An odd sock, he thought.

At least he had been helpful, he thought grimly, as he and the boys went through and found more altered records and then went to update Montgomery on their progress.

Castle hung back as the boys left.

Montgomery eyed him. "What?"

It was a last-ditch effort to try to persuade Montgomery to use his authority as Captain. It would spare him from having to have this fight with Beckett.

A protective detail wasn't going to stop Lockwood and they both knew it. Castle was in an ongoing state of panic over it.

"Next time he sees her, one of them is going to die," Castle pointed out, forcibly controlling his voice to keep it from wavering or cracking. "Take her off the case."

Montgomery raised an eyebrow. "Because that worked so well when I kicked her off the Raglan case?"

Castle grimaced. Okay, so Montgomery had a point. He felt guilt twist through him. Because he had been the one to encourage Beckett into going around Montgomery's edict kicking her off the Raglan case by reopening her mother's case. Just as he had been the one to pry into her mother's case before. Anything that might happen would be on him—and he would never ever forgive himself.

"Castle, did Beckett ever tell you how we met?"

He blinked at this seeming non sequitur. "No."

"I was working late one night and went down to archives to locate some old reports. And there she was, with a flashlight and a banker's box open on her lap, studying this unsolved. She was a patrol cop then; she wasn't even authorized to be down there. When I asked her what the hell she was doing, she told me this was her mother's case and she found some things that didn't add up. Now, I could have written her up, right then."

Castle could picture it, the young Beckett, poring over the records with a flashlight. "Why didn't you?"

"Because I knew it wouldn't stop her. It was there in her eyes."

Oh yes, Castle knew that look in Beckett's eyes.

"And I thought with this kid's tenacity and some training, she'd make a hell of a homicide."

Castle's heart twisted. "That tenacity is going to get her killed."

"Did Beckett tell you why I've let you stick around and follow her for so long?"

His lips twitched in a pale imitation of a smile at the memory the question evoked, the happiness of their first morning together, the closest he'd come to really smiling in days. "She said you said it was because you saw that I made Beckett's work more fun."

Montgomery gave a wry little smile that faded as he went on. "Beckett's the best I ever trained, the best I've ever seen, but I knew she was headed for burnout because she poured it all into the job and had nothing left over. It was worrying me for a while. And then you came along and somehow, you made her have fun. You pushed Beckett out of herself, out of the narrow life she'd made for herself."

"She pushed me out of the narrow life I'd made for myself too," he returned quietly. As nice as it was that Mongomery was saying this, he didn't want it to sound like his relationship to Beckett was about what he had done for her. She'd challenged him, she'd aggravated him, she'd inspired him, she'd made him a better man. She didn't owe him anything.

"I don't get involved in my detectives' personal lives," Montgomery reflected aloud, his gaze turning to look out at the bullpen, surveying his purview. "It's none of my business, unless it affects their work." He turned back and met Castle's eyes. "You and Beckett have done pretty well keeping your relationship out of the precinct but I've known Beckett for long enough, longer than anyone else in the 12th, and I can tell you that you've been good for her." He paused and straightened up, his tone changing. "I cannot make Beckett stand down. I never could. And the way I figure it, the only one who can is you."

Castle tried not to wince. Damn it all to hell. What was it with both Jim Beckett and Captain Montgomery, her father and her mentor, deciding it was on him to make Beckett stand down? Did they not understand that he had a relationship with Beckett to try to preserve and if he did this, it might well sound the death knell to their relationship—and Beckett would still end up going after Lockwood?

"What makes you think she'll listen to me?"

Montgomery gave him a look. "I guess that's up to you but I know you're not nearly as silly as you act. If anyone can go toe to toe with Beckett and come out alive, it's you. Besides, Beckett trusts you."

 _He_ might come out alive but his relationship with Beckett might not. His heart might not. And if anything happened to Beckett, his heart definitely would not survive.

Oh god. Castle's gut, his stomach, twisted sharply.

He had to do this. He had made a promise to Jim Beckett and he kept his promises. More importantly, he had to do it for Beckett's sake. She might end up hating him but Castle would a billion times rather have Beckett alive in the world and hating him than the alternative of a world without Beckett in it. He _could not_ face that.

* * *

With the news about the altered files and Ryan and Esposito running down the people who'd been in charge of the records room, Castle was at last able to persuade Beckett to leave the precinct. He'd gone down to the records room to find her, a still island of ruthless concentration and implacable determination in a sea of files, with the officer currently running the records room doing his best to make himself scarce and keep his distance from Beckett.

He waited until his mother and Alexis went upstairs before he went into his office, hovering in place as he watched Beckett leaning over his desk over which she'd spread out files and papers from the Beckett drawer.

After a moment, she glanced at him. "Castle, if you have something to say, just say it."

He swallowed, trying to calm his rabbiting heart. She needed to stop this, just walk away. He didn't know if they'd ever be able to safely look into Johanna Beckett's case again but they certainly couldn't now. He just didn't know how to convince Beckett of this. Kate Beckett was a warrior to her core, a warrior with all a warrior's strength and a warrior's weakness, an inability to accept that her strength had limits and a reluctance to admit that sometimes strength alone simply wasn't enough.

He loved her for being a warrior and the necessity of what he needed to do was threatening to rip his heart in two. How could he love her and knowingly let her put her life in danger? How could he love her and try to change her or ask her to be something less than what she was?

But how could he not? Her _life_ was worth it, worth everything. And he'd known for more than a year that he would do anything to keep Kate Beckett safe.

"Yeah," he finally began, trying to figure out his words, pacing a few steps before he stopped and faced her. "Beckett, everyone associated with this case is dead. Everyone. First your mom and her colleagues. Then Raglan, now McCallister and even Ryker as collateral damage. You know they're coming for you next."

Beckett made a small so-be-it face even as she sighed a little. "Castle, I'll be fine. Captain Montgomery's got a protective detail on me. Wasn't that hard to spot. And don't think I didn't notice the extra security guards down in the lobby."

"That's not going to be enough to stop Lockwood and you know it. Think of what they're up against. Professional killers? You saw what Lockwood is like." He paused, tried to calm his growing agitation, with little success. "Look, Beckett, you know me. I'm the guy who says we can move that rubber tree plant but I just don't think we're going to win this."

She stared at him as if he'd suddenly sprouted a second head. "Castle, they killed my mother. What do you want me to do?"

He took a breath. "Walk away."

She sucked in her breath, giving him a look that slashed at him like a whip, the sort of look Julius Caesar might have given to Brutus at his assassination. He'd known she would react like this—had been dreading it—but expecting it didn't make it any easier to see the utter betrayal on her face. "What…" she faltered. "Castle, I thought you… understood."

"They're going to kill you, Kate. And I just… I can't lose you."

"You're not losing me, Castle. I'm fine. I—"

"No, you're not," he cut her off abruptly. "Beckett, you're heading down the rabbit hole again, don't you see? You've got blinders on because this is your mom's case. I know you're a great cop but Lockwood, whoever he's working with, these guys are trained killers. It's like you said, Ryker had no idea who he was dealing with."

"Yeah, well, I do know what I'm dealing with!" she snapped, her expression, her stance radiating danger. "And if they want a war, I will bring them a war, right to their doorstep. Lockwood killed Raglan and McCallister and Ryker and whoever he's working for killed my mother. You want me to just let that go?"

He inwardly winced. "You put your mom's case aside before and you haven't really put that much time into it in the last few months. You've been playing it safe, not losing yourself."

She sucked in a shaky breath. "I've been playing it safe because I haven't had a _lead_ , you know that. This is my mom's case, the most important thing in my life, and you want me to just give it up because you're afraid that something might happen to me!"

The most important thing in her life. He flinched, dying a little inside. "Please, Beckett, you're talking like you're setting out to die for your cause and even if you're okay with that, think about what it will do to… the people who love you. Do you think your mom would want that, you to throw your life away to get justice for her?" he asked desperately.

She went white. "You—how can you even say that? You can't know what my mom would want!" Her voice rose sharply. "You didn't know her, Castle! You never even met her and it's because of them!"

"I _can_ say that your mom wouldn't want you to give up for life for this because I'm a parent too and if Alexis were ever in your shoes, I know what I would want and it wouldn't be for Alexis to throw her life away in some misguided quest to get justice for me!" His voice rose along with his upset, as he lost what little tenuous control over his words that he had.

"Misguided?" she choked. "You think me wanting to get justice for my mother is misguided?"

"I didn't mean it like that! I just meant that getting justice for your mom isn't going to bring her back and she would rather have you be happy than drowning in her case. You're allowed to be happy, Kate. You deserve to be happy. But you've been chasing your mom's case for so long that you're afraid to find out who you are without it. But Kate, you don't have to be afraid! Think about this last year, think about everything we've been through together, what we've been like together." He broke off abruptly, almost choking on the lump of emotion in his throat. His chest ached as if he'd cracked his ribs.

"Please, Castle, don't try to make this about us. This isn't about us."

"Of course it's about us! There is no us without you! That's what I've been trying to tell you! If you keep going with this, they're going to kill you and I can't… I love you, Kate, God help me but I do and I can't watch you throw your life away!"

"It's still _my_ life, Castle, mine!" she flared. "Not your personal jungle gym! You don't get to decide!"

"Not my—you think I think this is some kind of game? You really think that little of me?" he demanded, anger mingling with hurt. "Do you really think I'm trying to make your decision for you? Why have I been saying all this—"

"What is going on here?" His mother's voice interrupted him, made them both startle sharply.

He whirled around to see his mother, in one of her colorful robes. "I could hear shouting from upstairs."

Oh. Castle shut his eyes for a moment, guilt swamping him, drowning out his anger and frustration. He had completely forgotten about the fact that his mother and Alexis were upstairs, albeit at this hour, they should both have been sleeping. God, what had he been thinking? He'd tried so hard to keep from fighting with Gina when Alexis was around, had always managed to keep his voice down so their arguments wouldn't disturb Alexis. He had learned the hard way after Meredith had taken Alexis off to Paris how upsetting a loud argument between adults could be for children and he had sworn to himself that he wouldn't scare Alexis like that again.

But this was Beckett and the flip side of the coin of his love for her was that no one could upset him quite like Beckett could either. For better or worse, in the highs and in the lows, she had a way of making him forget about anything else but her, them.

He sighed. "I'm sorry, Mother. It's…" he trailed off. He couldn't say that things were fine or that it was nothing, the reassuring lies just wouldn't come. He finally settled for saying, "I'm sorry we woke you. Go back to bed, Mother. We'll be quieter."

Behind him, he heard a faint sound of steps and knew that Beckett had gone into the bedroom. Retreating or stalking away, he didn't know.

His mother's gaze searched his expression, a worried frown crimping her brow. "Oh Richard," she sighed. "whatever is going on, just talk to her, without losing your temper. She's a grown woman and you're a grown man, in spite of how you act sometimes. You know that yelling doesn't help. You're a man who makes his living with words. Use them."

"Yes, Mother," he agreed dutifully without even a trace of the usual irony that would have threaded through his voice at any other time.

His mother reached up and patted his cheek in one of her rare, overtly loving gestures. And then she turned and went upstairs.

He waited until he heard the faint sound of her door closing. He could find it in him to be glad that his mother had interrupted, untimely as the interruption had seemed. (Only his mother would have stepped in to interrupt an argument the way she had. Martha Rodgers who was used to drama and would therefore venture where angels feared to tread.)

He wasn't angry anymore, at least. But now that the adrenaline of frustration had drained away, he was abruptly exhausted. Still terrified but almost resigned to it, a sad terror. He couldn't keep fighting her, couldn't save her if she didn't want to be saved. Beckett—his badass Beckett (assuming she was still his, he thought with a flinch)—was stubborn and driven and once she'd made up her mind, a tornado couldn't have made her budge from her path. And fighting with her as he had been wouldn't work. It only acted as a match to the fuse of Beckett's temper, triggered all her stubbornness. His mother was right (hard as that was to admit). He needed to talk to her. Use his words, unfueled by temper. Talk to her and hope that she would actually listen. (The interruption might have helped for that too.)

Although it occurred to him with a sudden sharp stab of panic that Beckett could be packing right now. Cutting her losses and running.

 _No._ She wouldn't. She couldn't.

She wasn't. He noted that with a surge of relief that died as his gaze noted what she was staring at, her stance frozen in place in front of the dresser. She was looking at the jewelry box he had given her last year, at the picture of her parents on the lid. A mental image of the picture flashed into his mind, Jim's and Johanna's smiling faces. He heard her voice in his head from earlier: _this is my mom's case, the most important thing in my life…_ He flinched, could imagine that the sight of the picture of her parents would remind her again of what she'd lost because of whoever was behind her mother's murder, not only her mother but also the years in which her dad had been lost, drowning.

He remembered Jim saying he had come to terms with losing his wife—Castle couldn't imagine how but his respect for the other man had skyrocketed. That Castle needed to convince Beckett that her life was worth more than her mother's death. Her life, their future.

And that was really it. It was all he had left, only his love, and he didn't know if that was enough. He could only hope and pray that, in spite of the rabbit hole, somewhere inside her adamantine Detective Beckett shell, his Kate wasn't totally lost. Hope that somehow, somewhere, she was still his Kate, still the woman who had come so far in letting him in. The woman who loved him and had promised always.

"Beckett. Kate," he began quietly, trying to keep his voice from trembling with suppressed emotion. She turned to face him, her expression unreadable. He inwardly winced. Her professional poker face was in place and it stung, still, to see it, this evidence that she was, again, hiding her emotions from him. "I know it's your decision to make. But if you keep going with this, they're going to decide. They're going to kill you, Kate, and I'm asking you not to choose your mom's case over your own _life._ Please, Kate." If he had to beg, he would beg. Beckett's life was more than worth it. "If this last year has meant anything to you, if you—" he choked and had to swallow hard before going on. He couldn't say 'love,' he thought he would break down completely if he did. "if you care about me at all, just please don't do this." He broke off, blinking frantically against the tears that were pricking at the back of his eyes.

She didn't respond for a long minute in which Castle swore he could feel his heart cracking, their relationship—everything—teetering on a knife edge. Their partnership of more than two years, their relationship of a year, against her mother's case, the central, driving force of her life for the past 12 years.

She let out a shaky breath. "If I care about you?" she choked on something like a strangled sob. "I _love_ you, Castle."

He almost sagged with relief, his throat closing. She was Kate again, his Kate. He could see the fight drain out of her, see her lowering her shield. He wasn't sure what he did, didn't consciously decide to move, but one arm lifted a little as if drawn towards her by a magnet. And then the last of her walls came crashing down as she catapulted towards him. He caught her in his arms, closing his arms around her as if he would never let her go again, as a surge of relief so powerful he was dizzy with it swamped him. The constriction around his chest eased and he could breathe again, inhaling the familiar cherry scent of her hair. She was still with him. He hadn't lost her.

She clung to him. "I love you, Castle, you know I love you but I don't think I can give up on my mom's case forever."

He pressed his lips to her hair. "I know, Kate. You don't need to drop your mom's case forever, just for now. If we're going to do this, we'll do it the smart way, the safe way. But running headfirst after Lockwood isn't the answer, Kate."

He had no idea at this point what a safe way to pursue Johanna Beckett's case would look like, with the sheer scale and scope of the conspiracy behind it, but for the moment, he decided not to worry about it. Beckett backing down from chasing Lockwood was enough, at least for now. He hoped—prayed desperately that it would be enough to keep Beckett safe.

"I don't like this," she mumbled. "I don't want to let him win."

"You aren't letting him win. You're making a tactical retreat in one battle so you can come back later to win the war."

"Okay," she agreed softly. She sighed. "I'll tell Captain Montgomery tomorrow that I want to be taken off this case."

He shut his eyes on a wave of gratitude and relief. Beckett had chosen to stand down. She had _listened_ to him when it came to her mother's case. And their relationship had survived, made it to the other side.

"Okay," he echoed quietly.

She was silent for a long few minutes. He only held her and thought that he would do anything just to keep the privilege of holding Beckett like this.

"Castle?" she finally broke the silence.

"Hmm?"

"Earlier... what I said…"

He waited. She had said a lot. They had both said a lot, each managing to hurt the other.

"My mom's case isn't the most important thing in my life. You are," she mumbled and then promptly turned her face into his shoulder, as if embarrassed to have made such an admission.

He lost his breath. She really had chosen him, her life with him, over her mom's case.

"You're the most important thing in my life too."

She shook her head a little against his shoulder. "Me and Alexis," she corrected him. "I can share."

He felt his lips curve in a faint smile, the first in what felt like weeks, his entire chest filling with warmth. "You and Alexis both," he amended. Because of course she was right. Kate and Alexis were both the most important things in his life, the center of his world.

He drew back just enough to look down at her and she lifted her head to meet his eyes. "I love you." He felt like he needed to say the words again, to make up for the way he had yelled them at her when they'd been arguing. Just to tell her because it was true and not because he wanted to persuade her to do something and without invoking the help of a God he wasn't sure he believed in as if his love was somehow something to fear.

Her eyes softened, becoming lambent with gold and green sparks, as only happened in her tender moments. "I know, Rick."

As usual, when she called him by his first name, all he heard was _I love you_.

He kissed her softly, tenderly, letting his kiss tell her everything that was in his heart, and felt all the emotion in her response. And for the first time in days, since the moment he'd heard about McCallister's murder, he felt his fear and his worry ease.

Kate was still with him, still his. He had pulled her back from the rabbit hole. And for the moment, that was enough.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: I hope this satisfied…_


	35. Chapter 34: Knockout 3

Author's Note: Thank you all so much for the responses to the previous chapter. Given how nervous I was over it, I appreciate it a lot. This is the third of four chapters taking place during "Knockout." I hope it manages to do some justice to one of the most pivotal scenes in canon. And fair warning, this chapter is a long, heavy, emotional one.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 34_

The next day was somewhat surreal.

Castle knew he wasn't the only one who felt that way as he was perfectly aware that Beckett hadn't slept any more than he had and what little sleep she'd gotten had been punctuated by bad dreams.

Beckett had been rather hollow-eyed in the morning but Castle took heart—or tried to take heart—in the fact that for the first time in a few days, Beckett ate breakfast with him and Alexis in the loft. She wasn't running after Lockwood.

The weirdness of the day didn't abate when they arrived at the precinct to find Montgomery's office still dark and unoccupied and was informed by a passing uniform that Montgomery had called to say that he would likely be out of the office all day as he had some business to take care of.

Admittedly, it wasn't entirely unheard of for Montgomery not to be around. His position as Captain of the 12th necessarily meant that he was called down to One PP on a fairly regular basis and he was called out to any major scene involving a member of the 12th.

But when combined with the intensity of the Lockwood investigation, one that Montgomery had been involved with from the beginning, it still threw Castle off. And from what he could tell, it rather disconcerted Beckett too.

She called Montgomery to let him know her decision to be taken off the case and then, for good measure, sent him an email as well. (For official business like assignments, Beckett had been trained enough in the bureaucratic ways of the NYPD that she knew the value of having a paper record in addition to a mere phone conversation.)

Castle glanced at Beckett as she returned from speaking to Montgomery. (She had retreated to the emergency stairwell to have some privacy for the conversation.) "Everything okay?" he asked quietly.

She nodded, giving him a rather wan attempt at a reassuring smile. "We didn't speak for long. He said he was busy with some things but he agreed that it might be wise for me to step off the case for now."

"What is it?" he asked as she paused. There was something in her expression, a flicker of some added worry.

She shook her head a little. "It's… nothing, really. It's just… Montgomery sounded tense, worried over something."

"Well, it's sort of a stressful time," he placated, although he wasn't sure how much he believed of his own words. Roy Montgomery was a police captain, had been a damn good homicide detective in his day, had been a cop for more than 20 years. If anyone knew how to keep his cool, it was him. And Beckett knew Montgomery better than just about any other cop in the 12th, both from having been trained by him and working under his authority for so long but also because Beckett was a cop too, trained to read people.

"Yeah," she agreed. "That's pretty much what he said and mentioned something about One PP. I don't know. I might be over-thinking it." She managed a faint simulacrum of a teasing smile. "I sort of have conspiracies on the brain right now. I think I've been spending too much time with you, Castle."

He pretended to huff. "I'll have you know it's a physical impossibility for you to spend too much time with me."

That piece of silliness was rewarded by a real smile, somewhat shaky, but a real smile nonetheless, one that brightened her eyes. "Your ego really knows no depths, does it?"

"It's not ego; it's the truth," he asserted with mock defensiveness.

She rolled her eyes at him and he allowed himself a grin, feeling the odd sense that something wasn't quite normal fading. Call him crazy but few things made him feel quite like everything was normal in his world than the sight of Beckett rolling her eyes at him with that laughing glint in her eyes.

They both sobered as Esposito and Ryan appeared, each hefting a box of records, no doubt of all the officers who'd been in charge of the records room over the last decade and half or so.

Both boys were, of course, trained cops (although Ryan hadn't yet mastered the professional poker face to the extent that Beckett and Espo had) so they barely blinked an eye when Beckett told them both that she was stepping away from the case, leaving them in charge. Castle had been somewhat apprehensive but realized that he'd underestimated both boys and their concern for Beckett when neither volunteered an update on where they were so far in looking into the altered records.

And, although he knew Beckett well enough to recognize that it was a strain for her, Beckett didn't ask. She had promised and so, even though he could see that the questions were all but bursting out of her, she didn't ask. He wasn't sure either of the boys noticed the toll it took on Beckett—she had her usual professional shield firmly in place—but he had an advanced degree in reading Beckett's expressions and he could see the faint lines of tension bracketing her lips, the tension in her jaw, and the way she was steadfastly _not_ looking at the records sitting on the conference room table. He suddenly remembered what Lanie had told him after he had first pried into Johanna Beckett's case, that it had taken everything Beckett had to stop looking into it the first time. He inwardly winced, feeling another stab of guilt.

It was hard for her though and he knew it because once they were done briefing the boys on everything they needed to know to take over the case, Beckett turned to him. "Castle, I'm going up to the gym." She shrugged her shoulders a little restlessly. "I need to… move, to be _doing_ something, but since I can't, I'm just going to go beat up a punching bag."

"Okay," he agreed mildly. He understood. It was something Beckett did, not that infrequently, when they were waiting to hear back about a lead in a case or when she was frustrated over a case in general. She wasn't a fidgeter but when her adrenaline was up (as it always was when she was working a case), she needed to be active, productive, and when it wasn't possible, it made her restless. Sometimes she sparred with Esposito but most of the time, she went to the gym and took out her frustrations on the hapless punching bag. Occasionally, he accompanied her to steady the punching bag for her but not today.

He immediately returned to the conference room, wanting to check in with the boys and vaguely feeling the need to apologize or something for them having to take point on this.

Esposito looked up the moment he entered. "Dude, you managed to get Beckett to stand down? How the hell did you manage that?"

He gave a rather rueful grimace. "It wasn't easy."

"Yeah but you're still alive, ain't you?" Espo returned.

"Didn't think it was possible," Ryan chimed in. "Never seen anyone be able to make Beckett stand down voluntarily. 's like magic."

Espo snorted, giving Ryan a sardonic look. "Yeah, Castle's like that Tobias Strange guy."

Ryan shrugged. "He got Beckett to take herself off a case about her mother. If that isn't magic, what is?"

"Never mind," Castle cut in. "Just remember that Lockwood's dangerous. He isn't just some run of the mill thug. Don't go after him without backup." Preferably an army of backup but he left that unsaid.

Esposito scoffed. "You're telling us how to do our jobs?"

"Well, no," Castle answered uncomfortably. He'd only meant… he didn't know what he'd meant aside from sort of telling them how to do their jobs except he felt he needed to say something.

Ryan came to his rescue. "We know, Castle. We've got our own personal score to settle with Lockwood, remember?"

"You can say that again. Lockwood isn't gonna know what hit him if I get a bead on him," Esposito grumbled.

Castle abruptly remembered Beckett's joke that the boys were suffering from mild hypothermia and wounded pride after Lockwood had kidnapped them. It was an odd thing to find reassuring but somehow he did. The boys of all people were fully aware of how dangerous Lockwood was; they'd be careful and in spite of the personal score, neither Esposito nor Ryan were in danger of falling into a rabbit hole nor were they inclined to be reckless.

Beckett returned to her desk quietly, still breathing hard and flushed with exertion (which made her look so hot he found it hard to look away), but she was, he could tell, calmer now.

They ordered in sandwiches from a deli down the street. While Lockwood was out there, Castle didn't particularly want Beckett to spend much time outside and she rarely agreed to leave the precinct for lunch anyway.

Afterwards, Beckett spent the afternoon diving into her paperwork and then going through the files of cold cases with a ferocious concentration that didn't permit a distraction. He was half-surprised that the paperwork wasn't cringing away from Beckett.

He spent the afternoon supplying Beckett with coffee and doing the same at intervals for the boys, holed up in the conference room going through records. He didn't let himself linger nor did he ask for an update on their progress. If Beckett was off the case, then he would step away too. It would be easier if he didn't know any more than she did.

And for the first time in days, he and Beckett left the precinct at the end of her shift, returning to the loft in time to make dinner with Alexis. Castle deliberately kept his gaze turned away from the security detail following them and the security guards in the lobby. Beckett might have stood down but he had no intention of calling off the guards until they were assured that Lockwood was incapacitated. But once in the loft, he felt himself relaxing more than he had in days.

Beckett, thankfully, appeared to feel the same. She spent dinner catching up with Alexis's news from the past couple days while he stayed mostly silent, perfectly content to watch and listen to the easy, affectionate flow of conversation between his partner and his daughter.

Afterwards, Alexis asked Kate to help her study for a French test and he was unceremoniously banished into his office as an unwanted distraction. At which he made a show of disgruntled protests before giving in and obeying.

Castle made an attempt to write but gave up fairly quickly and instead decided to distract himself by playing a computer game that involved space ships shooting lasers at killer aliens. He heard his mother come swanning in before too long and the sounds of her greeting Alexis and Kate.

He was pulled out of the game when his cell phone rang and he frowned a little. It was Captain Montgomery. "Castle."

"Castle, it's Roy. Look, is Beckett there?"

Castle stood up automatically. "She's in the other room. Do you want to talk to her?" he asked and then the next second, could have kicked himself for the inane question. If Montgomery wanted to talk to Beckett, he'd have called Beckett directly.

"Not yet." Castle felt a little flicker of apprehension. Montgomery didn't sound like himself. There was something in his voice; he sounded… uncharacteristically terse.

"Roy, what is it? What's up?"

"Look, Castle, I don't have time for explanations but I need you to do something for me."

"Of course," Castle agreed immediately. If Roy needed his help, of course he could have it. "What is it?"

"I'm going to call Beckett in a little while and have her meet me at that hangar where the get-away chopper was left, you remember, the one out by Linden Airport in Jersey. I need you to make sure you come with her."

Castle glanced towards the doorway of the office, reassured by the sound of Alexis's soft laughter, and he retreated quickly into his bedroom to ensure he couldn't be overheard. "What's going on?" he demanded. "Beckett's off the case, she told you that."

"Castle, I don't have time. I promise you'll get some explanations at the hangar but I need you to promise that you'll come out with her and when I say so, you have to make sure she gets out."

Castle's stomach plummeted. "Gets out? Gets out where? Gets out from what?"

"Get her out with her life."

With that chilling answer, the line went dead, leaving Castle to stare at his phone.

Oh god oh god oh shit. He supposed he should have known that this whole thing was too complicated to be solved so easily by Beckett stepping away from the case. Dominoes had already been set in motion…

He almost leaped out of his bedroom and stopped abruptly in the doorway of the office, his half-panicked gaze immediately finding Kate and Alexis, still sitting together at the dining table with a textbook spread out before them. Kate immediately glanced up at him and gave him a quick smile that he forced himself to return.

His heart was rabbiting around in his chest. He felt the sudden, insane urge to grab both Kate and Alexis and run, take them far, far away from here, to somewhere no one knew who or where they were and no harm could ever come to them.

It felt like an eternity but he guessed in reality it was only a few minutes before Alexis's answer to a question Kate had asked, both in French, was interrupted by the sound of Kate's phone going off.

Kate gave Alexis an apologetic look before she answered. "Beckett."

He watched and noticed the way Beckett's expression changed, her entire body tensing, her eyes flying to meet his, at whatever Montgomery was saying to her.

"Yes, sir… I'll leave right now."

She ended the call and turned first to Alexis. "Sorry, Alexis, but that was the Captain. He needs to meet with me about something so I think we'll need to cut this short. You'll be fine, though. You know this stuff."

"Thanks, Kate. Is everything okay?" Alexis asked.

Beckett flashed a quick, half-smile at Alexis. "Everything's fine," she said and Castle sent up a desperate prayer that the words wouldn't turn out to be a lie.

She stood up, heading to him. "Castle, that was the Captain. He said there are some things about the getaway chopper he needs to clear up with me to put into the official record before handing it off to the boys and wants me to meet him out at the hangar where they left it."

"I'm coming too," Castle blurted out almost before she'd finished speaking.

She gave him an odd look and he knew he must have sounded off. "You don't have to, Castle. It's just the Captain."

"I'm coming too," he repeated and then added, more quietly, "I'm your partner, remember?"

"I remember," was all she said and made no further attempt to dissuade him from coming with her.

They were out of the loft within minutes, once Beckett had shrugged into a jacket and grabbed her gun and Castle had made sure to give Alexis a quick hug and kiss on the forehead. "You'll be okay, right, pumpkin? Grams will stay with you."

"I'll be fine, Dad. You and Kate go and be careful."

Castle's heart clenched at this but he forced a reassuring smile. "We'll see you later."

The drive out to Jersey had never felt so long. He wasn't good at staying still at the best of times but with the growing worry ratcheting up inside him, the Captain's words running through his mind, he really wasn't capable of sitting still. His leg jigged the entire drive and he had to practically sit on his hands to keep from fiddling with the radio controls because he knew from painful experience that fiddling with the radio in Beckett's car was a quick way to get his hand slapped or his ear pinched.

He'd never been more thankful for Beckett's tendency to silence as, for once, he wasn't any more inclined to talk than she was. He didn't know what was going on—he trusted Roy Montgomery, he did—but the sound of Montgomery's request that he get Beckett out with her life was making him panic. What was going on? What did Montgomery know? What had happened?

Beckett pulled up behind the hangar and Castle tried to take comfort in the silence as they got out of her car but instead he only found it ominous. The hangar sounded and looked deserted except that Montgomery's car was here.

He and Beckett exchanged glances and then moved towards the door leading into the hangar.

"Captain? Captain!"

"Over here." Montgomery emerged from an office along the wall.

At that moment, Castle's phone buzzed with the notification of a new text message and he heard Beckett's phone alert as well and he pulled out his phone and glanced at the message only to feel like he'd been punched in the gut.

 _3_ _rd_ _Cop—it's Montgomery!_

Castle froze, forgetting to breathe, forgetting to move, forgetting everything, his thoughts scattering like fallen leaves in a tornado. The third cop—Montgomery—he—how—what—he knew Lockwood—he was involved, had been involved in the kidnapping scheme.

 _Get her out with her life._

Shit. Castle suddenly understood, or thought he did, what this was. Montgomery was baiting Lockwood, using Beckett as bait. That was why he'd called her out here at this hour of the night, why he'd wanted Castle to be around.

The sound of a gun cocking made Castle jerk his head up to see Montgomery holding his gun out. His heart spasmed but Castle forced himself not to react. Montgomery wasn't pointing the gun at Beckett—not that it mattered. He knew how fast Montgomery could draw and Castle wasn't Superman to move faster than a speeding bullet. But this was Roy, who had called him to get Beckett out with her life. He could not believe that Roy was a threat to Beckett.

"Put the gun away, Roy."

Castle stared at Beckett's back. She was tense, a tightly coiled spring, her hand hovering by her gun. His heart twisted. Oh god, what this would do to her, to find this out about her Captain, her friend, her mentor. This was worse than Royce, this was about her mother's case.

"Kate, I'm not going to jail for this. I can't put my family through that."

"Why?" Kate gritted out, ignoring Montgomery's statement.

"I was a rookie when it happened, Kate. McCallister and Raglan were heroes to me. I believed in what we were doing. We were just going to snatch Pulgatti that night. Bob Armen wasn't even supposed to be there.

"Armen reached for my gun. That's when I heard the shot. I didn't even know it was my gun that went off until Armen went down. Then McCallister pulled me into the van. I remember him saying, 'it's okay, kid. It's not your fault. Happens in this town every day.'"

Castle flinched with every sentence of the explanation—so brief, so damning. He felt as if the world were tilting beneath his feet, everything he'd thought he'd known about the Johanna Beckett case, about this man, crumbling before him.

Oh god, Beckett… Everything in him hurt, thinking about what this must be doing to Beckett.

"McCallister and Raglan tried to drown it. But not me. I became the best cop I could be. And then, when you walked into the 12th, I felt the hand of God. I knew He was giving me another chance and I thought, if I could protect you the way I should've protected her."

Castle felt his entire body jerk at that. Shit. Oh god, oh no, please let Montgomery not have been the one who hired Dick Coonan.

"Did you kill my mother?" Beckett's voice was low, deadly. Castle flinched, taking a step closer to her. He wanted desperately to hold her but knew he couldn't. At this moment, right now, Beckett wouldn't welcome his touch. He suspected she'd entirely forgotten about his presence.

"No, that was years later. But she died because of what we did that night."

"Then who killed her?"

"I don't know how but somehow he figured out what we had done. He could have turned us all in. Instead he demanded the ransom money. He took that money to become what he is and God forgive me but that may be my greatest sin."

 _He._ The Dragon. Montgomery knew who the Dragon was, had known all along. The thought was like another punch to the gut.

"Give me the name. You owe me that."

"No, Kate. I give you a name, you'll run straight at him. I might as well shoot you where you stand."

Castle flinched, hearing again Montgomery's voice saying, _Get her out with her life_.

"That's why you brought me here, isn't it? To kill me?"

Castle winced. Oh god, Kate, she didn't really think that, did she?

"No, Kate. I brought you here to lure them."

"You baited them?"

Castle became aware of lights, a car, approaching, slowly, quietly. His heart thudded and he stepped closer to Beckett.

"Now they're coming. They are coming to kill you and I'm not gonna let them. I am going to end this."

"I'm not going anywhere, sir."

Beckett's quietly spoken words galvanized Castle and he moved closer, tensing even more. Get her out with her life. This was why he was here.

"Yes, you are. Castle, get her out of here!" Montgomery barked.

Beckett glanced over her shoulder at him but then turned back.

"Captain," Castle began quietly but trailed off. He'd promised Montgomery and he supposed in some small corner of his mind, unacknowledged, he'd understood that this was what Montgomery was planning. Get her out with her life—it implied that Montgomery didn't plan to be getting out.

He was abruptly terrified of how much he loved Beckett, how willing it made him to sacrifice Montgomery's life if it meant saving Kate. Not without a struggle, not without guilt, but Castle never doubted he would do it. And that was terrifying. To know he would abandon this man he liked, this man he respected, leave him to die in order to save the woman he loved.

Montgomery shot him a look. "Don't argue. That's why I called you. Get her out of here now!" It was an order.

The car was getting closer. It was a big car, too big for just Lockwood. Of course Lockwood wouldn't be alone. He'd had thugs last time when he'd kidnapped the boys too.

Castle put a tentative hand on her shoulder. "Kate."

She twisted away from him. "Captain, please, just listen to me. You don't have to do this."

He heard the tears starting in her voice. "Kate."

She fought him off. "No. Please, no. Sir, I forgive you. I _forgive_ you."

Castle's heart hurt. _Kate…_

Montgomery flinched a little and shut his eyes briefly. "This is my spot. This is where I stand."

"No. No, sir, please."

The car was coming closer. They needed to leave, needed to get out of here.

"No." Beckett's voice sounded clogged with tears.

"Castle, get her out of here!" Montgomery shouted and Castle swallowed hard and then grabbed Kate and lifted her bodily into his arms, ignoring her protests and her struggles.

He had to do this. _Please, Kate, forgive me, I'm sorry, but I can't lose you…_

He didn't have time for a last look at Montgomery, no time for goodbyes, as he hurried out of the hangar, carrying Kate, crying and protesting. But he was aware that she wasn't fighting him with all her ability. He might be strong enough to carry her but he didn't have Beckett's training and he knew that if Beckett really wanted to, she could free herself. But she couldn't do so without actively hurting him and even in her desperation, she wouldn't do that.

She was sobbing as he made his awkward, careening way out of the hangar. "Rick, please."

He didn't release her until they reached her car and then he set her down, trapping her against the car. "Kate, ssh," he crooned, trying not to choke, his hands flying to touch her shoulders, her cheeks.

She had to be silent, couldn't let Lockwood hear her. He didn't want to do this but he covered her lips with his fingers. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he whispered the words over and over, meeting her eyes and trying not to flinch at the agony in them, the horrible knowledge of what Roy was about to do. The price he was about to pay for his past sins.

Tears slipped down her cheeks but she wasn't struggling anymore and he let his hand move, sliding around to cup her cheek, his thumb gently wiping away her tears, and she buried her face in his shoulder, clutching his arms as if she needed him to hold her upright.

A first shot rang out and then three more in quick succession. She jerked with each one and he tightened his arms around her.

 _Roy. Roy, I'm sorry. For Kate. Get her out with her life. I forgive you. I am going to end this._

Disjointed words, thoughts, ran wild through his mind with every shot.

There were two more shots and then nothing.

He waited, cautiously, not daring to breathe, and then after a long few seconds, released his breath and somewhat loosened his hold on her.

Another shot rang out and he felt her tense, ready to break free and run back in there. He held her back for another minute, counting the seconds until a full minute had gone by and then when there was nothing more, only silence, he released her.

She sprinted back into the hangar and he followed her to see her falling to her knees beside Roy. Roy's _body_. Dead. Lying beside him, also dead, was Lockwood.

On the other side of the chopper were the bodies of three more thugs, all dead.

Castle felt tears well up in his eyes and didn't try to fight them as he watched Kate sobbing over Roy's body, touching trembling hands to his face and then his jacket. Roy. Oh god. _Roy._

 _O heart! Heart! Heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead,_ his literary mind keened.*

Oh Captain, my Captain, indeed. Tears slipped down over Castle's cheeks and he let them fall, his chest aching with grief for the man, his friend. Roy Montgomery had been a good man, he thought. No matter what he'd gotten involved with, no matter what he'd done. He had made a mistake but spent his life trying to atone for it. And now he had willingly sacrificed himself to save Kate's life. The courage of it made Castle's breath catch in his chest.

Kate was still crying but she turned her head to look at him. "Castle, the boys," she choked, her voice cracking a little.

The boys. Oh god. They needed to be told.

Castle took his phone out with trembling hands and quickly called Ryan's cell. He didn't trust his voice not to crack and betray his tears and if he was going to break down, Ryan would understand.

Ryan picked up immediately. "Castle?"

"We need back-up," he managed to say. "It's—"

"Oh God, Beckett," Ryan choked, interrupting him.

"No," he quickly added. "She's—" he broke off. He couldn't say she was fine because she _wasn't_ ; neither of them was fine. "It's Montgomery," he choked out and his voice did crack on the name. _He's dead._ But the fatal word stuck in his throat. He couldn't say it. He fell back on police speak, futile attempt to distance himself from the reality of it. "Officer down."

Ryan made a strangled noise. "What happened?" Ryan demanded. "Where are you?"

Castle swallowed the lump of emotion in his throat. "At the hangar where the getaway chopper was left, by Linden Airport in Jersey. Montgomery… took out Lockwood and three of his thugs. To save Beckett. But Lockwood… got him too."

"Lockwood's dead?"

"Yeah. Montgomery… said he was going to end this and he did," Castle managed to say.

"We're on our way," was all Ryan said, his voice shaking a little, and then ended the call.

Castle put his phone away and then staggered to his knees beside Beckett, touching Roy's still hand and then pulling her into his arms. She didn't resist but neither did she curl into him, didn't respond. She stayed on her knees, staring at Roy, as lingering sobs shook her body, and he sat on the cold ground, keeping his arms around her.

And so they kept vigil over the body of Captain Roy Montgomery.

He had no real awareness of time passing except as measured by the way Kate's sobs slowed and then gradually ceased. His legs went stiff from sitting on the ground, his shoulders tense and beginning to ache from the strain of keeping his arms around Kate for so long without moving (and from carrying her out of the hangar earlier) but he didn't care, didn't move.

It could have been minutes or hours—or years—before he heard the sound of sirens approaching and he only turned his head as Esposito and Ryan burst into the hangar, their gazes immediately finding him and Beckett and then stopping on the Captain's body.

"Captain," Ryan gasped.

Espo didn't make a sound, only ran over and staggered to his knees beside them, beside the body. He stared and then blinked and looked away. It was a minute before he turned his head to look at them. "Beckett," he said, his voice gravelly.

Beckett stirred for the first time in ages, turning her head to look at Esposito and Ryan, who was also kneeling by his side. "It was his gun that killed Bob Armen," she said, her voice sounding flat, unlike herself. "He baited them, to save me, to end this." She paused, her voice wavering, finally showing some emotion at the last words. "He didn't tell me who killed my mother."

"Beckett," Ryan choked.

Kate let out a shuddering breath and Castle belatedly realized that he still had his arms around her. He'd entirely forgotten and it was a testament to how distracted they all were that he suspected Kate herself had forgotten too or she would most likely have pulled herself out of his arms when the boys arrived (or if she was aware of it and still hadn't pulled away, that would reveal even more). And the boys appeared not to have noticed and possibly hadn't.

"I need to tell Evelyn," was all Beckett said.

Castle flinched, his heart twisting. Evelyn. Shit. Roy's _family_. Evelyn, Roy's girls, his son, off at college. The kids were so young. Rob Montgomery had just turned 21, Castle remembered Roy mentioning it a couple months back, barely older than Beckett had been when Johanna had been murdered. And Becca and little Mary—oh god, they were even younger than Alexis, Becca being 15 and Mary 13.

Espo nodded. "Coroner's on its way and CSU. We'll take care of things here," he said expressionlessly.

"Yeah, thanks," was all she said quietly before she pushed herself to her feet, moving slowly with none of her usual grace.

Castle clambered to his own feet, trying not to grimace at the stiffness of his limbs as he stood up, the various little twinges of his body protesting. Not that his physical discomfort mattered anything at all.

He and Kate left the hangar quietly and he was brought up short as she held out her keys. "You want me to hold them for you?" he asked blankly.

"I want you to drive." He was still gaping at her like a landed fish when she closed his fingers around the keys and slid into the passenger seat of her car.

She was letting him drive her car. Was tacitly admitting that she wasn't sure she could drive safely right now. Oh Kate…

He finally managed to uproot his frozen feet and hurry around to the driver's seat of her car. At any other time, if Beckett had let him drive her car, he would have been bouncing with glee but right now, at this moment, it just made his heart ache.

The drive back to the City took place in silence, much as the drive out to the hangar had, punctuated only by Kate's somewhat ragged breaths, the occasional sound like a strangled sob, and once they were back in Manhattan, her quiet directions for how to get to Captain Montgomery's home.

She didn't move for a long minute after he parked, only stared out at the house, her breath becoming fast and shallow.

He watched her in helpless sympathy and not for the first time, marveled at Beckett's ability to do this every day, break this worst of news to families on a daily basis.

This wasn't going to be the hardest hour or so of Beckett's life—finding out about her mother's death would, he suspected, always be that—but it was certainly going to be right up there at the top. And that thought made his chest ache as if he'd cracked a rib.

"He died to save me," Beckett whispered, her voice cracking. "How am I supposed to go in there and look his wife, his daughters, in the eye?"

Oh god. He turned and slid his hand under her hair to cup the back of her neck, in a caress he knew she found to be soothing. It was all he could think to do. "I don't know," he sighed. He thought frantically but he honestly could not think of what to say. He didn't know how he was going to face Evelyn and the girls either. "He died a hero," he finally husked lamely. He didn't know how much that would comfort a grieving wife but… He suddenly remembered Beckett telling Sam Holland's wife in that case involving the faux fiancée last year that her husband had died trying to save the environment and the look on the wife's face. Maybe it would make it a little easier.

Beckett let out a shuddering breath and nodded, swiping at her eyes a last time, before she got out of the car.

It turned out to be one of the hardest hours of his life until that point too.

Castle knew that even if he lived to be 100, he would never forget the look on Evelyn Montgomery's face when she opened her front door and saw Beckett's face. Evelyn was a cop's wife; she knew what it meant when a cop showed up on her doorstep late at night and with a tearstained face at that. He would never forget the small, anguished cry that escaped her. "Roy…" He would never forget having to watch as Evelyn Montgomery proved her mettle by controlling her own agony in order to comfort her daughters. Would never forget watching Evelyn disappear into the Captain's office to call her son and let him know the news, his imagination easily picturing the young boy recognizable from Roy's pictures of his kids, and then the punch in the gut of learning his father was dead.

Beckett was the one who spoke to Evelyn, explaining in brief terms Montgomery's death, saying only that it had happened in a fight with a killer in their current case. Montgomery had died a hero's death in the line of duty.

He had never felt so useless in his entire life. So useless and so racked with guilt and remorse. He was the one who had carried Beckett out of the hangar, kicking and screaming, and how did he know if Beckett's being there to stand with Montgomery might have made a difference, evened the odds a little? Even against Lockwood and his three thugs, Montgomery and Beckett were no pushovers and he could have taken Beckett's backup piece and… He tried not to fret over the what-ifs; he didn't know and Montgomery, who was no slouch as a cop or a strategist, had believed it necessary to save Beckett's life. But it was hard not to wonder, not to blame himself, as he was faced with the devastation of Evelyn, who'd just lost her husband of 30 years, and Becca and Mary, who'd lost their father.

He had promised Captain Montgomery but he thought that this was one promise he might never be fully at ease with having made or kept.

He didn't know how Beckett did it. He felt worse than useless, a big, lumbering fool of a man, sitting uncomfortably on the couch and just watching as these little girls' lives were shattered. (Becca and Mary were so young, even younger than Alexis. He suddenly desperately wanted to see Alexis again.)

He was a writer but he had no words beyond the conventional, trite words of how sorry he was. How did one express the inexpressible? How did one say anything to help people bear the unbearable?

He had a sudden memory of talking to Captain Montgomery, of the two of them watching Beckett as she talked to the sister of Caleb Shimanski, the bike messenger in that case involving the Wellesley family almost two years ago. Of wondering aloud how Beckett did it and Montgomery's response. _Better than anyone I know._ And now, terribly, tragically, Beckett was comforting Montgomery's own family.

And for about the billionth time, he could only be amazed by her. She was reeling from the revelations about Montgomery's involvement in her mother's case but she'd forgiven him; she was devastated over his death. And still, she managed to set her own grief aside as she comforted Montgomery's family.

Castle had no idea how long it was before Evelyn gave Beckett a last hug and said, with quiet dignity, "Thank you for telling me what happened, Kate."

He and Beckett stood up and as Beckett and Evelyn exchanged a few last words, Castle hunkered down on his knees before Becca and Mary, putting a gentle hand on each of their shoulders for a moment. "Your dad loved you so much," he told them quietly. "He used to talk about you guys all the time so I feel like I know you, even though we haven't met often. He was a good friend of mine and I want you to know if there's ever anything you need, you can call me, okay?"

Mary only sobbed but Becca, her young face drawn and looking older than her years, nodded. "Thank you, Mr. Castle," she managed to say barely above a whisper.

His throat felt tight. "I'm so sorry about your dad," he whispered. _I'm sorry I couldn't—didn't—save him._

The tears in Becca's eyes spilled over and he felt like a villain as he straightened up.

He gave Evelyn a hug too. "I'm so sorry," he said again.

Evelyn nodded, blinking back tears. "Thank you for coming, Rick."

He glanced at Beckett in concern once they'd left the house. He didn't mention it but he noted the deepening lines of strain around her lips, the pallor of her skin. She needed to be home. She returned to the passenger door and got inside her car without a word to him.

It wasn't until he had also gotten into the car that she said, her voice exhausted, sad, "Take me home, Castle."

He reached over and gripped her hand with his as he drove, only releasing it when he absolutely needed to. And the fact that she let him hold her hand without commenting on how he should keep both hands on the wheel was yet more evidence of how shaken she was.

He was a little surprised when they walked into the loft to see Alexis downstairs along with his mother, who had a glass of wine in her hand. It was late enough that he'd expected Alexis to be in her room and preparing to go to bed, but he was incredibly thankful that Alexis was still awake.

His mother and Alexis both turned to greet them, their smiles immediately fading as they saw his and Beckett's faces, their pants both stained and dirty from the hangar floor. Alexis immediately leaped up out of her chair and rushed over to them. "Dad, Kate, what is it? What happened?"

He caught Alexis in his arms, shutting his eyes against the tears that were pricking at his eyes at the thought of Montgomery's girls, his son, who had just lost their dad tonight.

Alexis lifted her head to frown at him. "Dad?"

He sighed and kissed her forehead before leading her over to the couch and dropping down heavily onto it. He glanced quickly at Beckett, who had almost crumpled onto the armchair, before turning back to Alexis. "Captain Montgomery's dead," he told her softly, the stark awful truth—the words that neither he nor Beckett had actually said until now—seeming to echo in his mind, his chest aching.

Alexis went pale, her stricken eyes immediately turning to Kate. "Oh God, Dad."

Her horrified whisper was almost drowned out by his mother's exclamation. "Oh my God!"

Alexis moved over to sit on the arm of the armchair and leaned over to hug Kate. "I'm so sorry, Kate."

Kate returned Alexis's hug. "Thanks, Alexis."

And he felt a little spark of warmth kindle in his chest for the first time in hours as he saw that the lines of strain around Kate's lips had eased a little at Alexis's hug.

"What happened? Were you… there? Was what why he called you?"

Kate glanced at him and met his eyes for a moment and they had one of those instantaneous silent moments of communication that only lovers, or people who were very close, could achieve. He trusted Kate to give a suitably edited response.

"He was shot," Kate answered gently and he was amazed all over again that she managed to say that without her voice wavering. "He… had something to tell me about my mom's case but your dad and I had just… left when it happened. We went back after we heard shots fired." None of what she said was technically untrue—Kate wouldn't outright lie to Alexis, any more than he would—but it was, of course, misleading. But there was no way he wanted Alexis to know even a fraction of the twisted strands of the conspiracy behind Johanna Beckett's murder. She had already been affected by Johanna Beckett's case more than he'd like—although that wasn't saying much since his ideal preference would have been that Alexis's closest brush with murder stayed in the fictional realm of his books.

"Are you in danger?" his mother spoke up, her voice sharp with worry.

He looked up at her. "No, Mother, we're safe. Montgomery—he made sure of that." They were safe—at least for now, but he wouldn't say that, couldn't say that. Roy had sacrificed his life for Kate. For them, for their family, Castle thought, for the four of them in this room and for Jim.

"It sounds like he died a hero's death," his mother commented, her voice soft.

Kate was trying to appear stoic for his mother's and Alexis's sake but she was looking increasingly wan, at least to his eyes, made sharper by love and worry, and Castle abruptly decided that both his mother and Alexis knew enough now.

"He did," he agreed, his voice gruff with emotion, before changing the subject. "Alexis, it's late and you have school tomorrow."

"But Dad…"

"Go to bed, pumpkin," he said gently but firmly. "You don't need to stay up late for this and you have a French test tomorrow."

"All right," Alexis gave in with marked reluctance before she turned to give Kate another hug. "I'm really sorry, Kate."

"Sleep well, Alexis," Kate responded quietly.

Alexis stood up and moved to kiss his cheek and hug him. "You're really okay, Dad?" she asked softly.

"I'm fine, sweetie," he told her reassuringly and told himself that, physically at least, it was true. "Good night. I love you," he added, his eyes suddenly stinging, his throat tight, again, at the thought of Roy's kids who would never hear their dad say those words again.

"Love you too, Dad. Good night, Gram."

"Good night, darling."

He turned his head to watch Alexis vanish up the stairs, his heart squeezing with so much love for his daughter and a desperate hope and prayer that he could keep Alexis safe, shielded from all harm, and yes, that Alexis wouldn't be left without a father when she was still so young, as Roy's kids had been. At least, Rob, Becca, and Mary had Evelyn. Alexis—well, he was the only real parent Alexis had, Meredith being what she was. He loved and trusted his mother but it wasn't the same. He was only incredibly thankful that at least, now, if anything happened to him, he knew he could trust Kate with Alexis.

He turned back to see that his mother had moved to put her own arm around Kate. "How are you holding up, kiddo?"

"Mother," he intervened. How did she think Kate would be holding up?

Kate glanced at him and then turned to meet his mother's eyes. "Ask me again tomorrow and I might be able to tell you, Martha."

Thankfully, his mother accepted that. "Oh, of course, Katherine." His mother cupped Kate's cheek in her hand. "You let me know if there's anything I can do, Katherine darling."

"I will, Martha."

"Get some sleep, Mother," he spoke up, mildly.

His mother glanced at him and then leaned in to press a kiss to Kate's cheek with, for once, no dramatic flair but as naturally as if she did it every day. "I'm so sorry, Katherine. Try to get some rest, dear."

"Good night, Martha."

He accepted in his turn his mother's kiss on his cheek. "Good night, Richard."

"Good night, Mother."

His eyes met Kate's the moment his mother had gone upstairs and in silent synchronization, they both stood up, reaching out to grip the other's hand, as they retreated into their bedroom.

They completed their nightly ablutions quickly and still in silence and it was only a few minutes before he slid into bed and Kate immediately scooted over to rest her head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her.

Silence settled over them for a few minutes while Castle tried—and failed—to think of comforting words to say.

Kate gave a soft sniffle and he tightened his arms around her and bent to brush his lips against her forehead and finally settled for saying, utterly lamely, "I don't know what to say, Kate. I wish… I wish I knew how to help you with this."

Kate sniffed again and he felt a small wet spot forming on his t-shirt and knew she was crying. His heart hurt all over again. "You've helped," she managed to say, her voice barely above a whisper.

"But I haven't done anything." He left unsaid that he hadn't done anything except prevent her from standing by Montgomery's side against Lockwood.

"You helped," she repeated. "Just being there." She choked a little and tightened her arm around him. "Being here… helps."

"I'm sorry," he choked out. "Sorry I didn't let you try to save him." He'd promised Montgomery but he hadn't known that Montgomery was planning to sacrifice his life like that.

"No, Rick. You—you did what he asked and you… you saved me. I can't—I don't blame you for that, don't blame you for anything."

"But…"

"No," she interrupted him again. "Don't, Castle. You did what he asked and he… he wouldn't want you to—" she broke off on a sob and it was a little while before she finished, her voice wavering. "He… he used to say that there's no victory for us, only the battle, and if we're very lucky, we find a place to make our stand. He chose to make his stand."

"He was a hero." Roy Montgomery was a hero. Because after all, the best heroes were flawed but found a way to rise above their flaws, made mistakes and atoned for them and in doing so, set an example for others.

"Yes, he is. He was," she managed to say and then, it was as if all her shored-up defenses came crashing down, finally giving way to the torrential wave of emotion. And Castle could only hold her as her entire body quaked with sobs, ugly, jagged gasps ripped from her throat, as she clutched him and cried. Cried as he had never seen her cry before and never ever wanted to see her cry again. Cried out all her disillusionment and betrayal and hurt over finding out Montgomery's involvement in her mother's case, cried out all her grief over his death.

It was terrible to listen to, heart-crushing and so very wrong to see someone so strong reduced to this. How many times could his heart break in one night? He felt a few hot tears well up and slide down his own cheeks and he wasn't sure if the tears were for Roy or for Kate. Kate, who had already lost so many people and now had lost yet another.

Castle wasn't sure how many minutes went by before her tears eventually ran dry, her sobs gradually slowing, but after a while, the storm of emotion passed, leaving her quiescent in his arms.

He stroked a hand down her hair in soothing, repetitive motions and pressed his lips against her forehead in silent sympathy.

He didn't say anything, wasn't sure he could say anything through the constriction in his throat, but could only hope that just holding her was enough.

It was some little while before the sound of her breathing slowed, evened out, and he realized that she'd fallen into the sleep of utter exhaustion, wrung out from all the emotional upheaval of the last hours. A small mercy. She needed to sleep.

He continued to hold her, keeping silent vigil over her rest through the hours of the night.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _* From the poem "Oh Captain, My Captain" by Walt Whitman._

 _A/N 2: The names of Montgomery's daughters are from IMDB and I've come up with a name for Montgomery's son, since Montgomery mentions in "Dead Pool" that he has two daughters and a son and I decided to trust that Captain Montgomery would know best how many kids he has._

 _Thank you to all readers, reviewers, followers, and those who have added this story to their favorites._


	36. Chapter 35: Knockout 4

Author's Note: The last of 4 chapters revolving around "Knockout." Fair warning, this is a very long chapter, filling in some more scenes we didn't see. It also serves as my tribute of sorts to Captain Montgomery because I loved his character.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 35_

Castle and Beckett were back in the precinct before 7 a.m.

Castle was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. He had only managed to fall into a fitful doze some time after 4 a.m., kept awake by his imagination recreating Montgomery's final stand against Lockwood and his thugs and wondering, endlessly, if Montgomery could have been saved if he'd let Beckett stay in the hangar and if it could have been done without Beckett ending up hurt.

He left a note for Alexis and his mother on the kitchen island before he and Beckett left, stopping only to get extra-large coffees on the way.

"Castle?" Beckett began, breaking the silence in the car after their usual stop for coffee.

He immediately turned to look at her. "Hmm?"

"I don't want anyone else to know about what Montgomery told us last night about his association with Lockwood and McCallister."

"Okay," he agreed slowly, drawing the word out. Not because he objected or because he was even surprised but because he was unsure why she was mentioning this. It was up to her. Beckett was the person who had the most right to determine what came out about the Armen matter.

"Are you all right with that?"

"It's your decision, Beckett."

"I'm asking you." Her voice lowered a little. "You've been a part of this investigation from the beginning and you were the one who found out about Bob Armen in the first place."

She was asking his opinion on something having to do with her mom's case. He knew her too well to think she would appreciate his mentioning how much the gesture meant to him but he could do her the justice of really thinking before he answered.

He suddenly remembered what the Captain had said a couple months back about his old friend, the former DA. _Lou screwed up. He did but that shouldn't take away from all the good he did._ And Castle's own response: _It's unfortunate that despite all that good, he's only gonna be remembered for this one bad thing._

"I agree with you. Montgomery made a big mistake back when he was a rookie but he learned from it and made up for it. Telling anyone now would do no one any good and only tarnish his memory. Evelyn, their kids, don't deserve that." Joe Pulgatti, the man who had gone to prison for Armen's death, was dead; he had been found dead in his cell one morning back in March from a heart attack. Raglan and McCallister were dead. Roy was dead. They had a duty to the living now.

They had arrived at the precinct and Beckett reached out to squeeze his hand, giving him a soft, approving look. She didn't say anything but then her expression spoke eloquently enough.

Beckett turned to look out the window towards the precinct's entrance, her expression abruptly sobering as she let out a breath. And it was his turn to squeeze her hand, a silent expression of support before they started what was going to be another hard day.

If it hadn't been for the fact that this was for Roy's death, Castle couldn't help but think that witnessing the way the NYPD honored one of its own when he fell in the line of duty was a great research opportunity. Fortunately, the NYPD had not actually lost a cop in the line of duty in the time he'd been Beckett's partner so Castle had no idea what the protocols were for such a thing. Now he was seeing them for real—and he wished he weren't, even as a corner of his brain persisted in taking mental notes.

The front entrance of the precinct was hung with purple bunting. The uniforms on duty in the lobby all had black mourning bands around their badges. The desk sergeant on reception duty, Eddie Pavlewski, was wont to greet them with cheerful enthusiasm but today only nodded solemnly. The bullpen was nearly empty at that hour of the morning but even so, the atmosphere everywhere in the building was subdued. Captain Montgomery's office was, of course, dark and empty, but a black ribbon had been draped over the back of his office chair, and the door was closed with a seal on it.

Castle supposed it was something like the pathetic fallacy but he couldn't help but think that even the sound of the phones sounded subdued. The phones usually sounded abnormally loud in the early morning hours because of the general lack of the usual hum of bullpen noise but this morning, even the ringing of the phones sounded quieter to him.

Esposito and Ryan both showed up right around 7, in spite of the fact that Castle guessed that both of them had been up late getting the bureaucratic ball rolling in dealing with the death of an officer, and a precinct commander at that, being killed in the line of duty.

Esposito had his professional poker face on but the indication of the turmoil he was hiding was still given away by his face that looked as if it had been carved out of granite. And he had apparently nicked himself shaving, a small cut like a red dash standing out on his chin. (No band-aids for Espo.) Ryan's expression was composed but his eyes were red-rimmed and he was dressed rather casually, for the first time in Castle's memory, with no suit vest or blazer but was instead wearing a polo shirt and a somewhat more casual-looking jacket.

In any other workplace, they would have exchanged hugs of mutual support and commiseration. But they were cops so Castle knew better than to expect that.

Instead, Beckett raised her eyebrows at Ryan's dressed-down appearance. "What, this is how you show up for work, Ryan? You look like a college kid trying to look like a grown-up."

"I was thinking more like high-end hobo," Esposito interjected.

"You should talk," Ryan retorted. "You lost a fight with your razor. You need a lesson on how to shave?"

"I'll get you some more of Damian Wilder's shaving cream to practice with," Castle jumped in.

"Oh no, you don't," Espo retorted. "I don't need no skin damage."

"Too late for that," Ryan heckled. "Oh no wait, that's just your face. Guess you can't fix that."

"Don't start with me, Honey-milk," was Espo's irritated riposte.

Castle choked a little on a bubble of amusement at Espo's faux outraged glower and promptly turned it into a cough, even as he felt a little tendril of warmth sprout up in his chest, odd as it might seem from this exchange. It might be unspoken but the camaraderie was real and it helped.

He had a sudden flood of memories of times Montgomery had joined in the teasing, his little smirks when he made one of his occasional deadpan wisecracks, and felt a fresh stab of grief.

Beckett put an end to the brief ritual of forced humor by saying, entirely seriously, "Come into the conference room, guys. We need to talk." She met his eyes for a moment and he understood that she was going to tell the boys what they had already discussed.

The boys sobered and followed her into the conference room and Castle followed, carefully closing the door behind them.

Beckett rested her elbows on the conference room table, meeting each of their eyes in turn. "Montgomery was the third cop involved in the mobster kidnapping scheme, we know that now," she stated quietly. "But as of this moment, I don't want any of us to mention it again." She paused and then went on. "No one—no one outside of this immediate family ever needs to know." Castle didn't miss her use of the word, family, to describe them. It was true but it had always been an unspoken thing about the closeness they all shared. It was a testament to the grief they were all feeling that neither Esposito nor Ryan blinked an eye at it. "As far as the world is concerned, Roy Montgomery died a hero. We owe him that. All of us."

Ryan blinked, his eyes wet, and he ducked his head. Espo frowned at the opposite wall, glaring at it as if he were trying to bore a hole through it with his eyes. Beckett glanced at Castle, meeting his eyes, and he nodded almost imperceptibly and then briefly clasped his two hands together on the table in a silent gesture of solidarity. The set of her lips eased just a fraction.

"Any objections?" Beckett asked quietly after a long moment. "You guys were the ones who found out about Montgomery's involvement."

She was ostensibly addressing both boys but she was looking only at Esposito. Ryan, of the two of them, would be the one to be willing to decide this on sentiment. Esposito liked his world clear-cut, divided between good guys and bad guys. (Castle suspected it was a hold-over from his days as a sniper; he'd needed the black-and-white moral clarity to do the job because if he started seeing his targets as flawed humans, he wouldn't be able to function.) If anyone was going to protest preserving Montgomery's memory after the disillusionment they had all suffered, it was him.

"Your call, Beckett," Esposito finally muttered. He paused and then he finally glanced up and looked at Beckett. "Bringing it up would only bring IA snoops around to dig into everything he'd ever done and they'd use it as an excuse to freeze the pension payments to Evelyn and their kids are young. We can't let that happen to their kids." His face darkened. "I saw it happen to Carol and little Timmy with what happened to Ike back when. It ain't gonna happen again, not on my watch."

Castle thought about Ike Thornton, Espo's former partner, resurrected from the "dead" last spring and reunited with his family. He hadn't really thought about it but of course, Espo would have seen how much harder things were for Carol Thornton and her son after Ike's supposed death when the IA investigation into his conduct would have prevented her from receiving what she would otherwise have received out of the NYPD Widows and Orphans Fund. He knew how Esposito had stayed a part of Carol's and Timmy's lives in the years after Ike's supposed death.

Beckett nodded and added quietly, "And One PP will balk at paying for a Full Honors funeral if they hear anything."

"You're right, Beckett. No one'll hear it from me," Ryan assured, his voice a little choked.

"Or me," Esposito concurred gruffly.

Beckett's expression eased a little. "Okay, good. I need to write up the official report on the Captain's death." Her voice was strictly controlled.

Ryan choked a little and abruptly turned away. Espo's jaw set and he resumed glowering at the opposite wall as Beckett stood up and left the conference room.

Espo and Ryan lingered for an extra minute to gather their composure before they too left. Castle ignored their departure, thinking. The idea—the compulsion—had occurred to him when Beckett had mentioned a Full Honors funeral. It was late—very late—to be thinking about doing this but he abruptly felt like he needed to. Make _Heat Rises_ a tribute to Captain Montgomery. He wasn't entirely sure how Beckett would feel about it but this was what he did, how he dealt with things that upset him in real life. He wrote about them.

His brain was abruptly churning as he started trying to mentally plot how to rework _Heat Rises_ , change the focus to Montgomery's fictional counterpart. It was going to be complicated to shift focus when the book was on the verge of being finished but vague ideas of how to do it were coming to mind. Complications from One PP were already the backbone of the plot so he thought he could add in another subplot, of sorts, making Captain Montrose an additional victim without too much difficulty.

He pulled out his Moleskine to jot down notes and then belatedly realized that he didn't have a pen with him. It was a sign of how distracted he'd been that morning since he normally never went anywhere without a pen. He stood up and went to his usual chair, grabbing a pen from Beckett's pen-holder on her desk.

She glanced at him, raising her eyebrows a little at the sight of his notebook. "Writing?"

"Yeah. I, uh, think I'm going to change _Heat Rises_ to be a tribute of sorts to Captain Montgomery. But don't worry, I won't mention anything even close to… you know," he reassured her quickly.

Her expression softened. "I never thought you would. I trust you."

His chest warmed. He would never get over hearing Kate say that.

"What do you think about having the boys, Lanie, and Jenny over for dinner tonight?" he asked. It was going to be a hard day so he thought, hoped, having their family all together might help.

"Martha and Alexis won't mind?"

"My mother is never happier than when guests come over. She loves having a larger audience," he answered only half-jokingly.

Beckett's lips twitched a little. "It's a nice idea. Tell the boys and I'll send Lanie a text."

That settled, he returned to jotting down notes for weaving in the storyline concerning Montgomery's counterpart into the existing plot of _Heat Rises_ while Beckett wrote the official report on Montgomery's death. He knew it was hard for her because of the pinched frown lingering between her brows as she typed, the set of her jaw. But all he could do was make her a fresh cup of coffee, taking the time to trace a heart into the foam. It didn't make her smile but her frown eased and for the moment, he was satisfied.

It took almost all morning before she finished and then angled her screen so he could read over what she'd written. He skimmed it quickly, part of his brain mentally noting the official police jargon scattered throughout but mostly focusing on the story, making it sound as if Montgomery had been ambushed while checking out the getaway chopper for an additional lead, and had then taken out Lockwood and his thugs and that he and Beckett had arrived only in time to hear the shots.

"It's good," he approved quietly. Beckett never asked him to look over one of her official reports but this one, she had, and he didn't need her to say that it was because he was the one used to writing fiction and the official report could not contain anything about Montgomery baiting Lockwood to draw him out or sacrificing himself because it would lead to questions about why. She was trusting him so much.

Her only response was a small sigh and then she shut her eyes and bent her head for a few minutes. He glanced around and then slipped his hand over hers, letting it rest there for a moment before removing it. She looked up at him, their eyes meeting and holding until the sound of a phone ringing in the bullpen broke the spell and made them blink.

"I need to go down to One PP to see about Montgomery's funeral arrangements," she said after a moment.

She left unsaid but he understood that he couldn't come with her to One PP. He might be her partner and accepted as such in the 12th but not in the eyes of the top brass at One PP, who viewed him as the writer tag-along they needed to tolerate because of the Mayor.

"Take Esposito with you," he suggested, not so much for protection although there was an element of that too but because he didn't think it was good for any of them to be alone today. There was comfort in numbers, in other people. People always gathered in a time of mourning.

She nodded and turned away. "Hey, Espo, you up for a trip down to One PP?" she called to Esposito, although she didn't need to raise her voice above its normal speaking tone thanks to the subdued bullpen noise.

Castle felt a flicker of renegade amusement at the way both Ryan and Esposito looked up at the sound of Espo's name. Both boys' expressions immediately registered their understanding of why Beckett was going down to One PP.

"Sure thing, Beckett," Espo answered trying to sound casual.

Beckett and Esposito left, with Beckett promising to bring lunch back for them on the way. Ryan retreated into the conference room, starting to return the files from their investigation into the records room into boxes to take back down and Castle joined him after a moment.

Ryan didn't look up as he entered the room, only went on methodically stacking files and placing them in the boxes. His lips were seamed tightly together.

Castle was wondering if he should make a quip of some sort but then before he'd decided what to say, Ryan abruptly broke the silence. "Montgomery's the only cop I've ever met who didn't dismiss me as some wimp the first time he saw me."

That sounded like Montgomery. "Even Beckett?" he asked in some surprise. Beckett wasn't the sort of person to leap to conclusions about people or anything really.

Ryan looked up. "Beckett didn't either to an extent but I still had to prove myself to her, just like everyone does. She tested me in various ways after Montgomery had me join the team and I realized after the fact that she'd been expecting me to fail. She was subtle about it, though, in Beckett fashion, so I didn't even realize it until after I'd worked with her for about a year, gotten to know her better."

Castle's lips twitched. Yes, that sounded like Beckett. This unexpected glimpse into the past fascinated him. He knew loss made people feel like reminiscing and it was nice to be privy to Ryan's stories especially as he wanted to know everything about Beckett's past. And Ryan was so much more open to talking about the past than Kate was.

"Montgomery paired me up with Javi in the spring of 2006 and I thought Javi was going to request a reassignment the next day in protest."

"Did he?"

"Nah," Ryan answered. "I think Javi figured that he and Beckett were good enough to make up for me being a dead weight on the team. Still don't know what Montgomery saw in me to make him so sure that I could keep up with Javi and Beckett. Beckett had already gone through two partners before Montgomery paired her with Javi and she basically chewed them up and spit them out again in two months."

Castle perked up. This was getting at a question he'd had from the first but had never known how to ask, why Beckett didn't have an official assigned partner before he came along, unlike every other cop. "What happened?"

"Both were good cops in their own right but neither could keep up with Beckett and I don't know if you've noticed but Beckett doesn't have much patience for people who aren't as smart as she is when it comes to work," Ryan noted rather dryly.

Castle smirked just a little. Yes, he knew. Beckett's compassion and empathy were almost boundless, as he well knew, but when it came to cops, she expected them to be as smart and dedicated as she was. She expected 100% effort from cops and usually got away with it because she herself gave about 125% effort into every case.

"Come to think of it, those first two partners of Beckett's were probably the only personnel mistakes the Captain ever made that I know of, but each time, he realized the problem and fixed it, transferring them elsewhere before it caused too big a problem," Ryan noted. "And then Esposito transferred in from the 54th and was paired up with Beckett a few months before Montgomery brought me into the 12th."

"What was the problem with Espo and Beckett being partners?"

Ryan's lips twisted a little wryly. "From what I heard, it was something like hitching two horses to pull a carriage and each horse having its own idea about where the carriage should go. Esposito and Beckett respect each other, you know that, but they're too alike in the way they approach cases and when it was just the two of them, they tended to butt heads too often." He paused and shrugged. "Admittedly, this is mostly from gossip and what I guessed after working with them. Either way, Montgomery thought it wasn't working and had me join the team. Esposito griped about not having time to babysit me but not in front of Montgomery. And then he called me 'Irish' for the first 6 months of our working together, acted like he didn't know my name."

"What made Espo stop?" Castle asked curiously. It would never have occurred to him that Espo and Ryan might not have gotten along immediately since they functioned so well together as partners that there were times it didn't seem as if they were two separate people at all. They should have some sort of mash-up of their names like Roach but Castle couldn't think of one. Either way, Espo and Ryan were certainly best friends now and acted as if it had always been the case.

Ryan shrugged. "I showed I could keep up with them and then a few months after we started working together, I tied with him at shooting and that really made him start to come 'round."

"You tied with _Esposito_ at shooting?" Castle repeated incredulously, his opinion of Ryan's marksmanship skyrocketing. "How'd you do that?" It was common knowledge in the Homicide squad and possibly the precinct as a whole that Esposito was one of the best shots in the entire NYPD, not just the precinct. He could get all his shots not only in the center ring but half the time, if he fired 10 times, there would only be one visible hole in the center, as all his shots hit the exact same spot.

Ryan gave a rather rueful smile. "I'm pretty sure it was a fluke but don't tell Javi I said so. He almost exploded and I mentioned it to rile him up for about two months after that."

"He still called you 'Irish' after that?"

"Yeah but by then it was more out of habit, I think. It was no skin off my back what he called me but when it got too annoying, I called him 'Cuba' and that would shut him up for a bit," Ryan smirked.

"Damn," Castle marveled. Up until that moment, if anyone had asked, he would have sworn that calling Espo 'Cuba' would be a quick way to be maimed, if not killed, since Esposito wasn't Cuban and it was one of his pet peeves when people acted as if all Spanish speakers were the same. But Ryan had done it and survived unhurt. Castle's respect for Ryan's toughness kicked up several notches.

Ryan made a small face. "He griped about it but I kept it up when he kept calling me 'Irish.' We used to get into little verbal skirmishes about it until Beckett put a stop to it once and for all. Esposito had just volunteered to run down a lead and Beckett stepped in, said 'Ryan can take care of it' and gave him one of her looks, you know the ones. He stopped after that, never called me 'Irish' again."

Castle felt himself smiling a little for the first time all day. Yes, he knew those Beckett looks, the ones that would make anyone snap to attention.

"Montgomery would have put a stop to it if it had been interfering with the way we worked together but our case closure rate was good so he stayed out of it."

Castle sobered, feeling a fresh stab of grief and guilt. Montgomery had been good at that, at knowing when to step in and when to get out of the way. It helped that Montgomery had trusted Beckett, Esposito, and Ryan so much, knowing they were all good, capable cops. "You know, I've actually known Montgomery longer than I've known you," he told Ryan.

"Don't tell me the Captain came to one of your book signings because I won't believe it."

"No, I didn't meet him because of my books. It was through the Mayor. Bob brought the Captain along for a couple of my Gotham poker nights." Bob Weldon had a small revolving coterie of friends, all friends of his dating back to his days as the DA before he'd become Mayor, who he liked to invite to join the poker nights. The identity of the person varied depending on their schedules, of course, and Montgomery had come to a couple poker nights before the Tisdale case. He had genuinely _liked_ Roy, the man, aside from having come to respect his abilities as a cop and a police captain.

"I always forget that you're such good friends with the Mayor."

Castle shrugged a little. "Knowing him allowed me to keep shadowing Beckett but aside from that, he's a little too busy to meet much." He paused and then, on a sudden thought, asked, "Hey, how did you and Espo find out that Montgomery was the third cop? Is there a trail that someone else could follow to him?"

Ryan briefly explained what led them to talk to Mike Yanovich and what he'd said. "He had a picture of Raglan, McCallister, and Montgomery from back then."

"Where's the picture?"

"Javi ripped it up. So the only way someone could find out is if they go and question Yanovich the way we did and that assumes they'd know to talk to Yanovich in the first place."

He nodded. "Okay, good. Not much good our not talking about it if the bread crumbs are still out there for anyone else to follow."

Ryan cleared his throat. "Montgomery's secret's safe with us. He brought me into the 12th when I wanted to get out of the 119th, brought me into Homicide, partnered me up with Javi and Beckett. He trained us, taught us. Beckett's right that we owe him."

Castle remembered what Montgomery had said about why he had let Castle stay on and keep shadowing Beckett. "I owe him too." He owed Kate's _life_ to Montgomery so he would do his part to protect Roy's name and his reputation.

* * *

Lanie was the first one to arrive for dinner.

Kate opened the door for her as Castle and Alexis were both busy, Castle with finishing up cooking the meal and Alexis in getting the table set for everyone.

Lanie immediately pulled Kate into a hug. "How are you holding up, honey?"

It had been a difficult, emotionally draining day. She'd had to fight to keep from staring at Captain Montgomery's empty office all day, had needed to keep all her emotions strictly clamped down when she and Esposito had gone down to One PP to make the arrangements for Captain Montgomery's funeral. She had only broken down once, after having to call Evelyn to see if Evelyn had any wishes for the funeral arrangements, had barely managed to retreat to the emergency stairwell in the precinct before the tears had come. Castle had followed her and she had cried in his arms and those moments when he'd been holding her had possibly been the only time all day when she hadn't felt as if her heart was being squeezed by an iron fist.

She was used to compartmentalizing but it was hard, almost impossible, when everything about work, about being in the precinct, reminded her of Montgomery. Of all he'd taught her, all he had meant to her. She'd respected him in a way she respected few others in her life. And then to find out that all this time, all these years, Montgomery had known, all along, who was behind her mother's murder, had known why her mother had been killed. Montgomery had helped to pull her out of the rabbit hole the first time, years ago, but he had never once told her what he knew. The full extent of Montgomery's deception had not hit her until today; yesterday had been too sudden a shock and when she'd realized what Montgomery planned to do, all thoughts of betrayal had vanished.

He had sacrificed his _life_ for her. And after facing his bereaved wife and daughters, she could not blame him anymore for keeping his secret. She could only grieve for the man she'd known, the man she'd respected, the man who had taught her so much and made her the cop she was.

Kate honestly didn't know how she would have gotten through the day without Castle. Not that he had outwardly done or said much. Aside from holding her as she'd cried, he had preserved much of the professional distance he usually kept between them in the precinct. But somehow, his presence was enough. Just being able to look up and see him, the knowledge that he was there, had helped more than she could ever have described.

And so she managed a rather wan attempt at a smile. "I'm surviving." She knew better than to answer with the automatic 'I'm fine' to Lanie, who wouldn't take it well if Kate tried to be evasive. She was taking things one step at a time, which was, as she knew from too much experience, the only way she could get through grief that wanted to suck her into a morass of depression.

Lanie studied her for a moment but whatever she saw in Kate's face apparently satisfied her. "I'm so sorry about the Captain, Kate," she said again.

Kate nodded. "Thanks, Lanie. Come on in. No one else is here yet."

Alexis greeted Lanie with a small, rather somber smile. "Hi, Dr. Parish."

"Hi Alexis," Lanie said with more gentleness than her usually tart manner. "And you can just call me Lanie, you know that."

"Can I get you something to drink?" Alexis offered.

Kate was distracted as Martha opened the door and swanned in much as she usually did. (Martha always seemed to enter a room as if she were making an entrance on stage.) "Good evening, my dears." She came straight to Kate, enfolding her in her warm, scented embrace and then kissing Kate's cheek. "Hang in there, kiddo. It gets easier."

Kate felt her heart warm. "Thank you, Martha." It was like Martha to be so direct and matter-of-fact in her reassurance but the genuine affection and worry behind the words were unmistakable.

Martha moved on to give Alexis a hug, greet Lanie, and then sail towards Castle to ask him to pour her a glass of wine, which she then lifted in a general toast. "Ah, well, now this party can get started."

Kate's eyes met Castle's in a moment of shared amusement at Hurricane Martha, Kate's lips curving in the first real smile in days, forgetting for that one moment why they were having this dinner in the first place. And then memory returned and her smile abruptly faded.

But before she could even feel guilt, the doorbell sounded again and Kate opened the door for Espo, who was followed almost immediately by Ryan and Jenny.

With everyone there, the noise level ratcheted up a few notches as Jenny was introduced to Martha and drinks were provided.

Castle had finished up with the dinner preparations and left the kitchen to mingle.

Esposito greeted him with a smirk. "Nice tiara, Castle, but I gotta say, you make one butt-ugly princess."

Kate choked on a laugh at Castle's expression of mock outrage. "The tiara is Alexis's, thank you very much, and I said I was ruggedly handsome. I never claimed to be pretty."

Espo's comment had attracted Ryan's attention and he joined them to peer at the picture taken on Castle's birthday, grinning at the sight of it. Kate felt a real smile curve her lips as she too looked at the picture again. She really did love that picture. She personally thought Castle looked almost ridiculously adorable with Alexis's old tiara perched on his head and the sight of him had made her heart melt in her chest. She'd been reminded of his and Alexis's stories about the tea parties he used to attend with Alexis and her dolls.

"It's not a good look for you, Castle," Ryan chimed in before turning to Espo. "Know what, seeing this, I'm really glad we didn't insist on enforcing our win in that bet over that case a couple years back when the killers switched each other's murders 'cause then Castle would have had to show up wearing a dress and that is just not something I ever want to see."

Castle spluttered and Kate stepped in. "What do you mean, your win? Castle and I won that bet and you both know it. We were the ones who managed to get the confession first."

"But the confession you got was for our case!" Esposito protested. "We bet that we'd crack the case first and we did."

"You did no such thing," Kate shot back, falling automatically into the competitive banter. "You hadn't managed to break your guy until Castle and I stepped in and broke him for you so that counts as a win for us."

"What are you talking about?" Jenny laughed, interrupting them.

"Sorry, honey," Ryan answered, returning to sling his arm around her shoulders, as they started to make their way to the table and sit down. "There were these two cases that we got assigned to and Castle, Javi, and I made a bet as to which team would be able to solve our cases first. It turned out that our two cases were actually connected and that the killers had struck a deal to kill each other's chosen victims, thinking they'd get away with it because neither would be suspected of killing someone apparently unknown to them. And Javi and I bet that if we won, the loser would need to wear a dress to the precinct for a week."

"And shave his head," Castle inserted. "But Beckett and I were the ones who managed to get Espo's and Ryan's killer to confess first so we won."

"You did not!" Espo retorted. "If you score a goal in our net, it counts as our goal."

"Making bets on murder, Dad, really?" Alexis asked. She turned to Kate. "And Kate, I thought you would be the one to make Dad behave better."

"Oh, she did," Castle pretended to cringe. "You should have seen her ream us out when she first found out about it. But then her competitive side came out and she was all in." He smirked at Kate while ostensibly addressing Alexis still. "Kate doesn't like to admit it but she hates to lose at anything so a challenge will always bring her out."

Kate shot him a narrow-eyed look but addressed Alexis in her turn. "You know what, Alexis, your dad's getting smug again so I think it's time we teach him a lesson in laser tag, don't you?"

Alexis grinned. "Sure thing, Kate."

"Now don't be such a sore loser, Beckett," Espo drew her attention back. "We all know Ryan and I won that bet. Right, bro?" He and Ryan exchanged congratulatory fist bumps.

"Yeah, you should just be glad we were too nice to make you and Castle shave your heads, although seeing you wear a dress to the precinct might have been kinda fun," Ryan teased.

"In your dreams, Ryan."

"Yeah, well, Castle wearing a dress too would probably have made everyone want to jab out their eyes anyway," Ryan quipped with mock resignation.

"Eh, you know if Castle had ever shown up in a dress, Montgomery would've banished him in a second," Espo returned, the levity in his tone abruptly vanishing.

The mention of Montgomery's name fell into the atmosphere like a stone, disrupting the lighter mood brought on by their teasing exchange.

Kate's smile disappeared, her heart abruptly pinching at the reminder of why Castle had invited them all over. Guilt that she had forgotten for even a minute and allowed herself to smile and laugh when Captain Montgomery and Evelyn and their kids would never have another family dinner again. She thought about those first dreadful meals after her mom had died when her dad and she had valiantly tried to force down food and stared at the empty chair at the table, the gaping hole in their lives that was never more heartbreakingly obvious than when they sat down for a family meal.

Perhaps predictably, it was Martha who broke the rather uneasy silence that now fell by urging people to eat, getting things started by passing the potatoes to Alexis.

The silence held as they all filled their plates and started to eat. It was one of the few times in Kate's memory that Esposito didn't dig into his food as if he hadn't eaten in a week but ate rather mechanically.

She thought about the times they'd ordered in food at the precinct and Montgomery had joined them. Those shared meals had usually been fun times because it had allowed Montgomery to shed some of his Captain persona, relax in their company and participate more freely in the stream of banter. Her heart hurt. She remembered some of the Captain's deadpan jokes, the times he'd joined them in the teasing.

Oh, she was going to miss Montgomery so much.

"Can I go to Captain Montgomery's funeral?" Alexis's quiet question made Kate jerk her head up. Her eyes met Castle's. It was his call.

"The funeral's going to be on Wednesday so you'd need to miss school," Castle began.

"I know. But we're not doing all that much in class now that AP exams are over and I… I want to be there."

"Then yes, you can come," Castle agreed, glancing at Kate.

She forced a small reassuring smile for Alexis. "You and Martha can sit with my dad at the funeral," she suggested.

Alexis's expression brightened. "Okay, thanks, Kate."

"How did your AP exams go?" Lanie asked after a moment, distracting Alexis.

Alexis answered and Jenny chimed in with asking Alexis about what classes she was taking.

And somehow, the sheer normalcy of Alexis chatting with Lanie and Jenny about her classes made the atmosphere ease. Kate's heart still felt heavy but it was better somehow. She, Castle, and the boys settled into talking, sharing some memories of Montgomery. And if the humor was a little less pointed than it usually was, the smiles and, yes, even the laughter were real.

Kate looked around at their family, everyone present with the exception of her dad, and thought that, after all, this—this atmosphere of warmth, this family dinner—was what she needed tonight. She had agreed to Castle's suggestion because she'd thought that it was what _he_ wanted and needed. She knew Castle and he was much more of a people person than she ever would be; he found the company of people he loved to be a comfort. She, on the other hand, was used to grieving in private. When she cried, she cried alone, or alone with Castle, but no one else. So she had agreed to the dinner for Castle's sake, rather expecting that it would prove to be something of a strain for her to keep up a pretense of normality.

But somehow, it wasn't. It was comforting, even reassuring, to be with these people who had all known Captain Montgomery, who knew what Montgomery had meant to her. Comforting, heart-warming to be with her family, people who cared about her and who had cared about Montgomery too.

Yes, this was what she needed tonight.

She glanced at Castle and felt a rush of almost painful emotion in her chest. This man, who could be tactless at times, who annoyed her and frustrated her and challenged her and… And just _loved_ her as no one else ever had or would. This man, who sometimes seemed to know what she needed even before she did and who tried so hard to give her what she needed.

She found herself thinking about their fight the other night when Castle had convinced her to step away from her mother's case, from going after Lockwood. She had been furious and hurt and betrayed and if Martha had not interrupted, Kate wasn't sure what she would have said next but it would likely have severely strained her and Castle's relationship. But Martha had interrupted and Kate had stormed into their bedroom only to have her gaze arrested by the keepsake box Castle had given her last year. And the sight of the box had made her anger abruptly fade away, reminded her of what he'd done for her long before they'd been together. And her parents' picture had made her remember the few times her parents had argued over the years. Her parents had argued—two strong-willed lawyers could not have lived together in complete harmony with no disputes—but they had talked it out and they had always loved more than enough to get past the arguments and rough patches.

Loved—just as she loved Castle and as he loved her.

Castle, who was her best friend, her lover, her partner… and the love of her life.

He was smiling as he talked to Esposito and Ryan, teasing them about the last poker night they had all had with Captain Montgomery. The boys were grinning and Kate knew them both well enough to tell that they had relaxed, their own grief momentarily lightening. Castle was so good at that, at lifting people's spirits.

On an impulse, she reached out and slid her hand over his where it rested on the table. He momentarily faltered in his words as he turned his hand up to curl his fingers around hers, although he carefully kept his gaze focused on the boys.

Esposito shot her a smirk and Ryan grinned like a Cheshire cat. Lanie waggled her eyebrows at her, an amused smirk playing on her lips, while Kate tried to pretend utter oblivion to the various reactions. What, she was allowed to hold her boyfriend's hand when they were in the privacy of their own home and surrounded by family, all of whom were well aware of her and Castle's relationship.

Espo made a teasing rejoinder to Castle, throwing in a jibe at Ryan's bad poker face, which had Ryan jumping in.

Castle left the boys to their mild bickering and turned his head to meet her eyes.

Kate smiled at him, hoping he could read her thoughts in her eyes. His fingers tightened around hers, his thumb sweeping over the back of her hand in a gentle caress, and she knew he understood.

And she felt the vise-like pressure in her chest easing.

She knew that these next few days until the funeral and even afterwards were going to be hard, emotionally harrowing, but for now, at this moment, she could smile and mean it. And for the moment, that was enough.

* * *

The next few days passed both too quickly and too slowly at the same time. Too slowly because once the arrangements for the funeral were made, there wasn't much to do in the precinct as they were in the odd transition period waiting for Montgomery's permanent successor to be appointed by One PP. But also too quickly because Castle wasn't ready, wasn't sure he would ever be ready in all honesty to say the last goodbye to a man who had been his friend and who had given his own life to save Beckett's. And he knew that Beckett, although she hadn't said so, wasn't ready either.

But as the saying went, time and tide waited for no man and the day of the funeral was here.

Castle looked up from fastening the cuffs of his shirt when Beckett returned to the bedroom from the bathroom where she'd gone to do her hair and froze. Oh.

He'd never seen her in her dress blues. Her hair was up in a no-nonsense bun and she looked very professional, severe, intimidating.

He stared, feeling for one crazy second as if he were seeing a stranger emerging from his bathroom. This police officer in the austere, buttoned-up uniform, her expression smoothed into granite stoicism—this could not possibly be the woman he was living with, the woman who was all lithe, sinuous curves and heated passion in his bed, the woman who teased him and bantered with him, the woman who watched silly movies and played laser tag with him and his daughter. How could he ever be enough for this dauntingly capable woman?

And then she made a small sound of frustration, her fingers struggling with the stiff cuffs, and she was Beckett again. _His_ Beckett. Looking oddly both younger and older at the same time, still a little intimidating but his.

"Here, let me," he offered. She surrendered her wrists to him without a murmur while he studied her face as he fastened her cuffs.

Now that he was close enough, he could see that her eyes were dark, shadowed, and in spite of her makeup, she still looked pale. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, wanted to tell her she wasn't alone and he'd stay with her. But he knew Beckett too well for that and so, after he finished fastening her cuffs, he took a small step back and deliberately gave her body a once-over.

"I've gotta say, Beckett, seeing you in your uniform is giving me fodder for so many new fantasies."

He was rewarded as she gave him a small smirk and raised her eyebrows at him. "Really, Castle? Seeing me in stiff polyester is what does it for you?"

"Did you really think there was any way that I _wouldn't_ find you to be hot in your uniform?"

She huffed a soft laugh. "Freakish man that you are."

"It's not my fault that you're hot in everything."

Their eyes met and held for a moment, their smiles fading as the thin veneer of humor cracked. And then she was stepping forward into him, her head resting on his shoulder, as he slid his arms around her waist.

"Castle, will you stand up with me when I speak?" she asked quietly.

"Of course."

She lifted her head and stepped back and his heart clenched as he saw the tears clinging to her eyelashes. She blinked and attempted a reassuring smile although it didn't quite make it, the wan curve of her lips somehow only managing to look poignant.

He could see that she was fighting for composure, trying to clamp down on her emotions so she could simply get through the day. His heart hurt. But he was too wise in the ways of Beckett to comment on it.

Instead he summoned up a smirk. "You know you're the hottest cop I've ever seen. It's terribly distracting."

She made a soft sound that was half a sob and half a choked laugh but her expression eased just a little, some color returning to her face.

And he felt marginally better. He could still make her smile and in doing so, lend her some strength to get through the day.

Beckett had talked him through the protocol for a Full Honors NYPD memorial service for a veteran, decorated precinct commander but the bare outline of what was going to happen had not truly prepared Castle for the spectacle of it.

His mother, Alexis, and Jim went ahead to St. Patrick's Cathedral separately while he and Beckett caught a ride with the boys, also wearing their dress blues (of course).

They met the hearse at the front of the cathedral, taking their places as pallbearers on either side of the casket. Castle met Beckett's dry-eyed but grief-stricken gaze and felt again the swell of emotion in his chest that he'd felt when Beckett had told him that Evelyn Montgomery had asked that he be among the pallbearers. It was, he thought again, both an honor and a privilege to be among the pallbearers. The other pallbearers, aside from Esposito and Ryan, were Roy's son, Rob, looking grave and older than his age in a formal black suit and Lieutenant Ahmed Hassan, who had been the Captain's best friend and his partner for more than ten years until the Captain had been promoted. (Castle had only met Lt. Hassan—or Ahmed, as he insisted on being called since he was retired now—the day before when he had come to the precinct to review the order for the memorial service one last time but even the one meeting had been enough to impress Castle. Beckett obviously liked and respected him and Castle had enough respect for Beckett's opinion that he took it as given that Ahmed must have been a heck of a cop but more than that, the man himself, while obviously grieving, was likable with a dry sense of humor.)

The heavy, muffled drums of the NYPD Emerald Society began the solemn cadence that accompanied the pallbearers' measured procession into the Cathedral with the casket. After setting the casket down, Castle joined his mother, Alexis, and Jim for the service while Beckett and the boys joined the ranks of nearly every member of the 12th precinct. (The precinct was being manned by only a skeletal staff, the few people who had pulled the short straw, although Castle knew that once the service was over, people who were on shift would be going straight to the precinct to work.) Castle noted Demming standing in the middle of the other officers from Robbery and other familiar faces, Karpowski, Stegner, LT, Velasquez, all somber and an impressive sight in their dress blues.

Behind the ranks of the 12th were the City officials, representatives from One PP and from every other precinct in the NYPD to do honor to a fallen comrade. Castle exchanged nods with Mayor Bob Weldon, standing beside the police commissioner and other top brass. Bob had called him a couple days ago to express his condolences over Roy and to confirm his attendance at the funeral.

The main eulogy was given by Lt. Hassan, who spoke movingly of his long years of friendship with Roy and of Roy's well-known devotion to the job, a devotion that had only been exceeded by his devotion to his family. Becca and Mary's sobs were muffled but still audible and Castle noted that tears were streaking down Evelyn's otherwise stoic face. Beside him, he felt Alexis slip her hand into his and he turned to look at her, tightening his grasp on her hand. And prayed, again, that Alexis would never know the devastating loss that Roy's kids had just suffered.

When the funeral was ended, the members of the 12th with the exception of Beckett and the boys, marched out in formation followed by the representatives from the other precincts along with other cops from Port Authority and from New York State. And Castle knew from what Beckett had told them that they would gather outside the Cathedral, a sea of NYPD blue-and-black, standing shoulder to shoulder.

The mayor and the other top brass from One PP followed the uniforms out and it was only then that Castle and the other pallbearers once again approached the casket, lifting the burden of their fallen mentor and friend, and making their way back out of the Cathedral. Once outside, Castle was momentarily blinded, blinking frantically against the sun glinting off not only the glass from the surrounding buildings but also the hundreds of badges on the chests of the uniforms waiting outside. The moment they emerged from the Cathedral, the uniforms saluted in crisp unison, as hundreds of New York's Finest paid their last respects to a fallen officer and brother in arms.

And the small corner of Castle's mind thought, again, that if it were not for the fact that this was for Roy, being able to see and experience a Full Honors memorial service for a fallen NYPD officer was a wonderful research opportunity. Even in spite of the heaviness of grief and guilt in his chest, his writer's mind couldn't help but appreciate the poignant solemnity and even beauty of the spectacle, the symbolism in the ceremony.

Castle, Beckett, and the other pallbearers made their way slowly down the front steps to the hearse with their precious burden. The motorcycle cavalcade that would escort the hearse to the cemetery was already in place while the band formed two columns behind the hearse.

They would be following the hearse to the cemetery for the more private burial ceremony, the chance to say goodbye for those who had known Montgomery best.

The slow, steady cadence of the muffled drums of the band began, the motorcycle brigade set into motion, and the hearse followed slowly. Beckett had lifted her hand in a last salute to her captain, her mentor, and her friend, and at the moment the hearse started moving, she slipped her free hand into his. He glanced at her to see tears glistening in her eyes.

They watched Evelyn and her children be escorted into the black town car provided by the Department to carry them to the cemetery and then Castle, Beckett, and the boys made their way and fell into the small procession of cars following the hearse.

At the cemetery, the band moved into position on the grass as did the flag bearers beside the freshly-dug grave. Beside the hearse stood a rider-less horse, the stirrups turned backwards in the traditional sign of mourning, a tribute to the fact that in his earliest days on the force, Montgomery had actually been a member of the NYPD mounted unit that patrolled Central Park, which had been news to Castle until just a couple days ago.

The pallbearers took their place to lift the casket for the last time. Again, the muffled beat of the drums marked their cue. Castle slipped on sunglasses, both against the glare of the sun but also because he honestly was not sure he could make it through this without crying and if he were going to cry, he preferred it to be hidden behind the glasses. He wondered if he were imagining it that the casket had become heavier or if it was only a symptom of his own dragging grief, his rising sense of the impossibility of it. He wasn't ready, was not ready to see Roy's devastated family have to say their final goodbyes to their husband and their father.

They carried the casket through a column of members from the 12th and from the other precinct where Montgomery and Lt. Hassan had worked as detectives, each officer snapping a salute as the head of the casket passed.

Castle moved to stand beside Beckett as they stepped aside to watch the flag-folding ceremony and the presentation of the flag to Evelyn, whose composure had given way to sobs. Castle felt tears sting his own eyes and wondered for the billionth time if there was anything he could have done differently to save Roy in that hangar, if he had let Beckett stay and fight.

He saw Beckett watching Evelyn cry and heard her suck in a shaky breath and then glance at him, meeting his eyes.

She moved to stand at the podium and he moved with her, standing with her, as she'd asked him to and as he always would.

She glanced at him again and then at the casket before squaring her shoulders and facing forward, facing Evelyn and her kids, the small group of mourners.

He didn't know what Beckett was going to say. Even if she had asked, he wasn't sure if he could have written this speech. But she hadn't asked, unsurprisingly. She was his independent Beckett and that aside, he knew she would see writing the eulogy for her Captain as part of her duty to him and it simply wasn't in Beckett to shirk any part of her duty. She had shut herself up in his office for a few hours yesterday to write it and emerged with red-rimmed eyes and immediately curled into his side, burying her face in his shoulder.

"Roy Montgomery taught me what it meant to be a cop. He taught me that we are bound by our choices but we are more than our mistakes."

Castle swallowed back the lump of emotion in his throat. Yes, Roy of all people had understood that people were more than the mistakes they made. He had made his mistake but he had atoned for it and in the end, given his life for it.

The sun was beating down on them and he felt a trickle of sweat crawling down his spine but he didn't move, only watched her. And he was awed, not for the first time, at her composure, her strength, in keeping her voice steady when he knew she was crying inside. He didn't know how she did it. He wished that he could be standing closer to her, close enough to touch her if only to rest his hand on her back in silent support, but he knew Beckett too well to think that she would allow him to do that. Not for his Beckett to ever show weakness in public.

"Captain Montgomery once said to me that for us, there is no victory. There are only battles. And in the end, the best you can hope for is to find a place to make your stand."

He blinked against the sting of threatening tears, hearing in his mind Roy's voice as he'd sent Beckett away. _This is my spot. This is where I stand._

"And if you're very lucky, you find someone willing to stand with you."

Beckett paused and glanced at him, her eyes meeting and holding his. Yes, he would stand with her. _Whither thou goest, I will go; and whither thou lodgest, I will lodge._

 _Always, Kate_ , he promised her with his eyes and hoped, thought, she understood.

Beckett returned her gaze to the front as she went on. "Our captain would want us to carry on the fight…"

His eyes moved to Evelyn, to her kids, Becca and Mary crying, Rob staring at his father's coffin stoically but with slow, silent tears tracing his cheeks. And then to his mother, to Alexis, who looked young and sad, to Jim, who looked somber but composed.

A sudden flash of light from some distance away caught his eyes. What was—

He tensed, then heard a distant crack and then he was tackling Kate to the ground and hoping desperately even as he knew it wasn't possible that he'd been in time.

One look at her face, pale and stricken, was enough to tell him the stark, terrible truth. And then he saw it—blood. On her glove. Staining her uniform.

 _Ohgodohgodohgod._

She'd been hit. He hadn't been fast enough, had failed her. And there was blood, so much blood…

"Kate," he gasped, not sure how he managed to speak through the obstruction in his throat. "Kate, please," he begged. Her eyes were wide, terrified. He choked on panicked sobs. Nonononono, he couldn't lose her. He couldn't.

"Stay with me, Kate. Don't leave me." _Please, Kate, please, you can't leave me. I don't want to live in a world without you in it._

She blinked at him, slowly, a tear slowly trickling down her cheek. No. No.

"Kate, I love you," he choked out. "You know I love you. Please, Kate, stay with me."

He couldn't breathe, was choking on panic and terror and love and heartbreak.

Nonononono, this couldn't be the end. This couldn't be the end. "You can't leave me, Kate. We—we have to get married." His voice cracked and he couldn't go on. They were supposed to get married. He was going to propose because he loved her and she loved him and she was a part of his family and they were supposed to get married and have children and she'd promised someday and this couldn't be the end. Not yet. Not now.

They'd promised _always_ and always didn't end, couldn't end like this, not this soon. They'd only had a year together.

Her eyes slid closed.

"Kate! No, please, don't leave me."

 _Please, Kate. Please…_

This couldn't be the end of their story. It just _couldn't_.

 _~To be continued…~_

A/N 2: I'm assuming this reassurance is not necessary but just in case (because I don't feel like being lynched), this story is going to have a happy Caskett ending so obviously Beckett is going to live.

As always, thank you, everyone, for reading and reviewing.


	37. Chapter 36: Aftermath 1

Author's Note: Welcome to the Aftermath of "Knockout."

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 36_

Ever afterwards, Castle had no very clear memories of the following minutes—hours—he didn't know. His memories of that time were a confused jumble of images, moments, a kaleidoscope of terror and trauma and choking panic. It was as if he were only half-conscious or existing in a sort of fugue state with less than half his mind present while the rest of him, the greater part of him, focused on Kate.

Someone—he never found out who—pulled him away from Kate and Lanie took his place, her trained hands feeling for Kate's pulse and trying to staunch the blood using Kate's gloves and then Lanie's own jacket.

Gripping Kate's hand while Lanie worked on her, refusing to let go of Kate as if by holding on to her he could physically anchor her to life.

Screaming.

A flash of red hair, Alexis's pale, terrified face.

Sirens.

"Beckett's down!"

EMT's loading Kate onto a gurney and into the ambulance. Struggling to follow only to have an EMT block him. "Let him!" someone barked out and the EMT gave way and he scrambled into the ambulance and latched on to Kate's ankle, the only thing he could grasp with Lanie and the EMT's starting their work to save Kate's life. He wasn't letting her go, could not let her go.

His eyes were burning with tears he refused to shed as he stared at what he could see of Kate's face through the portable ventilator covering her nose and mouth, helping her breathe. So pale, so… lifeless. He flinched away from the word.

"No, don't you do this. Don't you dare die on me, Kate Beckett. Stay with me…" he vaguely heard Lanie's half-chanting, half-ordering.

 _Kate Kate Kate Kate Kate, please Kate. Don't leave me, please. Kate, you can't leave me. Kate…_

He couldn't breathe, felt as his lungs had collapsed. Which felt only fitting as Lanie was performing chest compressions and he tightened his grip on Kate's ankle and tried to will her to survive. Kate was a fighter, she was tough, had the indomitable spirit of a warrior. She couldn't—she wouldn't…

"We're losing her," one of the EMT's warned, his voice rising.

Castle choked back a cry. Nonononono, he couldn't lose her. He loved her, needed her in his life in a visceral, primal way. As if she were air and water and sunlight and he couldn't imagine life without her. Couldn't imagine living without her.

"Kate, no! Don't you dare die on me! Stay with me, Kate, or so help me, I will spill every embarrassing story I know about you to Castle," Lanie half-threatened, half-ordered, her voice cracking.

He almost fell over as the ambulance came to a jarring stop. And then the back doors burst open and he was half-scrambling, half-falling out as hospital staff took charge of the stretcher although Lanie refused to give up her position, pressing down on Kate's chest as if she could keep her alive with her bare hands. And he was running after the stretcher, the harsh, artificial light of the hospital, the white walls and floor of the long hospital hallway giving him an abrupt rush of vertigo even as his vision felt as if it were narrowing in only on Kate's terrifyingly still form on the stretcher.

Lanie gave way to the hospital doctors and the stretcher was being rushed past double doors that swung closed, blocking Kate from view, and he felt an immediate spike of panic as he lost sight of her, his legs suddenly feeling rubbery beneath him as he came to a stop in the hallway. His heart was racing, his pulse pounding in his ears, his cheeks wet with tears.

He belatedly became aware of Lanie standing just in front of him, doubled over as sobs shook her body.

He forced his feet to move the couple steps to her side and placed a tentative, awkward hand on her back. He and Lanie were friends—of course they were—but their friendship had never been a tactile one. He and the boys exchanged fist bumps or friendly elbows to the side but he and Lanie never had.

He focused on his hand, his vision briefly going hazy, as he realized it was stained. Kate's blood on his hand.

Shit.

He yanked his hand away and scrubbed it against his shirt frantically.

"Lanie," he choked out, his voice sounding foreign to his own ears.

"Oh God, Castle," she gasped. "She—what're we going to do?"

He flinched. "She's going to live," he stated flatly. She had to because the alternative was unthinkable, impossible. It _could not be_.

Lanie nodded and then kept on nodding as if she'd forgotten to stop. "She's a fighter," she managed to say.

Castle didn't respond, couldn't respond as his throat had closed up.

"Castle!" The boys came running towards them, followed immediately by Jim Beckett.

Oh god, Jim.

Javi immediately pulled Lanie into his arms and Castle gripped Jim's arms as the older man looked as if he'd aged 20 years, appeared frail.

"Where's Katie?" Jim rasped out.

"Still alive," he managed to choke out. At least, she had been, he thought his heart twisting sharply.

Kate had to still be alive. Surely he would sense it if… if anything happened to her. He would feel it, somehow, would sense the way his heart would shatter if he lost her, would feel the way his world would end. He _couldn't_ believe that his heart would go on beating if hers didn't, not really. His existence might continue but he wouldn't _live_. He would go through the motions, make an effort for Alexis, but he knew—if Kate… if Kate didn't survive, neither would he. A vital part of him would be lost if he lost her. His life was in the balance too.

"Daddy!"

Castle jerked, turning away from Jim as Alexis and his mother ran in and Alexis threw herself at him. He caught her in his arms and then brought his mother in to the embrace as well, closing his eyes for a moment. His family.

He'd never wanted Alexis to be exposed to the darkness and danger in the world and now she'd seen someone she cared about get shot right in front of her. Oh god, he should never have let her come to the funeral.

"Where's Kate?" Alexis asked tearfully.

"In surgery," he answered, controlling his voice. He couldn't break down, not now, not in front of his daughter. He couldn't scare her more than she already had been.

"What the hell happened?" Jim demanded of all of them.

"Sniper rifle," Esposito answered gruffly and succinctly.

Jim flinched.

"Let's go find the waiting room instead of blocking the hallway like this," his mother spoke up and a wave of admiration and love for his mother's brand of strength momentarily broke through his haze of panic and grief. So overly dramatic in daily life but in crises, she had a way of keeping her head.

They moved as a group, Castle keeping one arm each around Alexis and his mother, while Ryan gripped Jim's arm and Esposito, naturally, kept Lanie with him.

They found a small waiting area with chairs and he ushered his mother and Alexis to sit down and then jerked his head. "I need to find a bathroom," he explained jerkily. "I—uh—I'll be back. Later."

He didn't wait for a response but fled blindly until he waylaid a passing nurse to direct him to the bathroom and narrowly managed to avoid crashing into multiple people and a wall or two as he rushed towards it.

He was trembling and now that he was away from his family, he couldn't hide it anymore. He almost staggered into a stall and collapsed on his knees by the toilet and just… fell apart. He dry-heaved over the toilet, retching up the contents of his mostly empty stomach, as ugly, ragged sobs shook his entire body. He was crying and choking and gasping for breath as if he were trying to insufflate molasses through a straw, in a paroxysm of emotion that racked his entire body. His brain kept reliving those last, fatal—he flinched at the word—seconds in the cemetery, the flash of light, tackling Kate. The blood on her glove, staining her uniform. Seeing Kate's shocked, terrified eyes. Kate's eyes closing. Her terrible, awful pallor, the blue-ish tinge to her lips testament to the amount of blood she'd lost.

 _Oh god._

He couldn't lose her. He loved her, needed her.

And he'd failed her. He choked again, having to almost stifle a cry of anguish against his arm.

Her blood was on his hands. Literally but also figuratively as well. He was the one who had started this. His own blind, reckless curiosity and need to know. He was the one who had pried into her mother's case two years ago. He was the one who had encouraged her to look into it again when she'd balked and kicked him out of the precinct two years ago. For the first time, he found himself irrationally regretting that she'd ever let him back in. If they had simply ended their partnership then, he would have regretted it but she wouldn't have opened up her mother's case again, would have been safe.

His heart hurt. He would never have been able to imagine regretting anything about knowing Kate, his partnership with Kate, but if it would have meant she wouldn't be fighting for her life now…

He suddenly remembered Kate's Valentine's Day message to him, what she'd written in the old copy of _Storm Warning_ he had signed for her. _You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and I'm thankful every day that you're in my life._

He choked on another sob.

Would she still say that now, when he hadn't saved her, hadn't been fast enough, had let her be shot?

He wouldn't even mind—not much—if she blamed him as long as she was alive to blame him, he suddenly thought and honestly meant it. His heart would break but whatever else, he needed Kate Beckett to be alive in the world. As long as she survived…

He wasn't sure how long he stayed on his knees by the toilet but eventually, he slowly, stiffly pushed himself to his feet, moving as if he had aged 50 years. Equally slowly, he made his way to a sink and started scrubbing at his hands to get the blood off. Kate's blood. He choked again and kept on scrubbing for far longer than necessary, until his hands were red and aching, but he didn't care, felt as if he might never get the blood fully off, just as he would never, ever forgive himself.

He lifted his head and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and shock broke through the mind-numbing fog of emotion. He looked like death warmed over—and then flinched all over again at the idiom, the terrible word.

He splashed some water on his face, getting rid of the tell-tale tear stains. He could not let Alexis see him like this.

Alexis. Jim. His mother.

He focused on the three of them. He could not break down, not again. He had to stay strong. For Alexis. For Jim.

Oh god. His heart twisted. What was his own devastation compared to what Jim must be going through? He still had Alexis but Jim had lost his wife and now his daughter—all Jim had left—was fighting for her life.

He had to be there for Jim. If—if anything happened, he would look after Jim. Kate would want that.

That thought finally had him stiffening his spine, abruptly ashamed of himself. He'd been selfish, indulged in his own emotions for long enough.

He had already failed Kate once. He wasn't going to do it again. And he could not fail Alexis.

He dried his face and hands and took another minute to compose himself, steady his breathing. In and out, in and out. It was something Beckett did and he wondered with another sharp surge of grief if she had any idea how much he'd learned from her, how much he'd changed because of her.

And then he returned to where his family—all of them—waited, slipping into the seat between Jim and Alexis and wrapping his arm around Alexis.

He felt Jim's glance and met the older man's eyes, dry-eyed and stoic, albeit pale and haggard.

"Kate's going to make it," he managed to say, his voice gravelly. _Damn it, Kate, don't you dare make a liar out of me. Please, Kate, you can't leave me, can't leave your dad._ "She's the strongest person I've ever met," he added, although he wasn't able to keep his voice from cracking. It might be true but it didn't take a genius not to realize that human strength could only do so much against a bullet to the chest.

Jim let out a shaky breath and he nodded but didn't speak, looked as if he couldn't speak.

No one said anything more, only settled in to wait.

The hours dragged by like years, centuries even, and Castle's only real conception of time passing was measured by when they each shifted, changing position as their bodies stiffened up from sitting in the same position in the hard, uncomfortable hospital chairs.

The waiting room was a neutral, even sterile place, no outside windows to give any indication of the passing hours. There was a TV mounted on one wall set to CNN but the volume was muted and a corner of Castle's brain could only wonder at why it was even on, because he couldn't imagine anyone sitting in that room waiting to hear news about a loved one and caring at all about what was going on in the rest of the world. He certainly didn't. As far as he was concerned, the entire universe had narrowed down to the waiting room and to whichever operating room Kate was in right now. Nothing else mattered.

Esposito and Ryan slipped out to take phone calls at one point and he lurched to his feet, heading out to join them just outside the waiting room. News, they would have news about the shooter.

"What is it?" he demanded tersely, although he kept his voice low.

"Nothing," Esposito growled. "The guy got away. He left the gun—a Mark 11, modified sniper rifle, favorite of Special Forces—behind but he got away. We're trying to get prints off the gun but no one saw nothing in all the chaos and the cemetery doesn't exactly have security cameras."

"What about before the entrance, the roads leading up to the cemetery?" he asked suddenly.

"We've set people to going through footage of any cameras in a couple blocks of the cemetery but it's a long shot," Ryan answered, his voice more savage than Castle had ever heard it.

Shit, the shooter was still out there. Whoever he was.

Castle needed to arrange for security for if—when Kate was out of surgery.

"Okay," he clipped out, controlling the urge to slam his fist into the wall, mindful of the fact that he was in full view of everyone else.

He and the boys returned to their seats, resumed their vigil.

Another eternity—or so it felt—later, Ryan stood up and paced restlessly around the waiting room, glancing at his watch. "It's been six hours now, damn it!" (He'd never heard Ryan come so close to swearing. Ryan looked like hell on a bad day, pale, his eyes red-rimmed and his hair disheveled.)

Six hours. What did that mean? No news meant that Kate was still alive, still in surgery, right?

He turned to Lanie. "Lanie, you have any idea…"

He trailed off, not even sure what he wanted to ask. Lanie looked up from staring at the floor as if the secrets of the universe were written on it.

"Someone would have told us if—if anything happened," she clipped out, tersely.

"So it's… good that we haven't heard anything," his mother ventured.

Good—what did that even mean right now, he wondered a little hysterically. There was nothing good about this. No news only meant that the worst hadn't happened. Yet.

He inwardly flinched and shut his eyes against the tears that threatened, clamped his mouth closed against the sobs.

"Yes, it's good," Lanie answered quietly.

 _Kate, please, you have to fight. Stay with me, Kate. Don't leave, don't go where I can't follow. I need you. Please, Kate._

A sudden thought had him leaping to his feet some time later and going out to find a nurse.

He found a nurse's station and headed to it. A nurse on duty, a matronly-looking women who looked to be about his age looked up. "Yes, sir, can I help you?"

"I'm here for Katherine Beckett," he managed to answer. "She was… she was shot. In the chest. I just… does she need blood? Can I donate? Her family—we're all here. Can we do anything? Does she need something? Is there anything we can do?" he blurted out, somewhat less than coherently.

He would donate blood, would donate his kidney, his liver, his lung—hell, he would donate his heart if it would save her life.

The nurse's expression softened with professional understanding. "If a patient needs blood or a transplant, someone would be in touch with you. I'm sure the doctors are doing everything they can for your wife."

His wife. His throat, his heart, his chest, everything seized up inside him at the words. Oh please, oh please, let them be true one day.

He couldn't speak, only nodded his thanks, and then made his unsteady way back to the waiting room.

His heart clenched as he saw that Alexis appeared to be crying, her face buried in his mother's shoulder while Lanie had moved to sit beside her, her hand patting Alexis's knee.

Three women. For a split second, he was reminded of the Three Fates who decided when a man's life would end by cutting a piece of string and then he blinked, his exhausted mind returning to reality and he hurried over to Alexis.

Lanie vacated the seat and he took it, sliding his arm around Alexis's shoulder so she turned towards him. He wrapped his other arm around her, resenting the arms of the chairs that made the position awkward. He pressed his lips against her hair and thought about the night when Alexis had broken up with Ashley a few weeks ago, the way Alexis had turned to Kate for comfort. Kate was family now. God, what would it do to Alexis if Kate—if anything happened to Kate?

Nothing was going to happen, he told himself firmly. Kate was going to be fine. She _was_. She had to be.

He hoped. Prayed.

It was hours—years—millennia—before a man in doctor's scrubs appeared in the waiting room. "Family of Katherine Beckett?"

He and Jim both jerked to their feet, taking a few steps forward, Castle trying not to stumble since his legs had stiffened up. "Yes," Jim answered.

Castle couldn't speak. He tried desperately to read the man's expression. He wasn't shaking his head or giving them pitying looks. Was he? He couldn't tell. The man looked tired but his tanned face was otherwise inscrutable.

"I'm Dr. Davidson, the trauma surgeon on duty," he introduced himself.

Castle barely heard. What the hell did he care what the man's name was? "How is she?" he croaked out almost before the man had finished.

"She's out of surgery and we've gotten her stabilized for now."

"For now?"

"During the surgery, she experienced cardiac arrest and…"

He could have sworn his own heart stopped, a strange buzzing sound filling his ears. He was peripherally aware of seeing Jim sway and only barely managed to fling an arm around Jim, catching him before the man could collapse. "Jim!"

Jim leaned against him for just a second before he straightened up, his jaw setting in a way that was very reminiscent of his daughter. "No, no, I'm okay," he managed. "How's Katie?"

"As I said, she's stable right now," Dr. Davidson repeated more gently. "We were able to get her heart beating again on its own. The bullet nicked her pulmonary artery but we repaired the damage to it. We're going to keep her sedated and intubated and monitor her very closely for at least the next 24 hours to make sure that she doesn't experience any additional incidents."

Incidents. God, medical jargon sounded so bloodless, a distancing mechanism, he supposed in a corner of his mind, rather like police speak.

"Will she be all right?" Castle asked impatiently.

"If she makes it through the next 24 hours without incident, she'll be pronounced completely out of danger. As it is, she's young and in excellent physical condition otherwise so we're optimistic about her chances of making a full recovery in a matter of time."

Oh thank God. It was Castle's turn to sway a little, feeling dizzy in the rush of soul-deep relief. She was still alive, stable. Not entirely out of danger but stable, out of surgery. She was alive. And the doctors were optimistic about her making a full recovery.

"Can we see her?" Jim asked.

"For now, I'm afraid we can only allow family members into her room and no more than two people at a time." Dr. Davidson looked at Castle. "Are you the husband?"

Castle inwardly flinched, opening his mouth but his voice failed him. He was Kate's boyfriend but the word felt… if not quite wrong, still inaccurate and definitely inadequate. Neither he nor Kate tended to use it except teasingly and it just… wasn't enough. Certainly not now, not anymore. Kate wasn't only his girlfriend; she was his… touchstone, the center of his world. But there was no way to explain that and he knew enough about the legalities to know that being a boyfriend didn't count as family.

"He's her fiancé," Jim inserted and Castle's head jerked as he stared at him and sensed the attention of everyone else in the room swivel around to focus on Jim as well.

Dr. Davidson nodded. "Good to meet you," he said perfunctorily, addressing Jim now. "Mr. Beckett, you and Mr.—"

"Castle," Castle finally found his voice when Dr. Davidson hesitated.

"You and Mr. Castle may see her at this time but I'm afraid for the next 24 hours, her visitors will need to be limited to family members and in order to limit the risk of infection, visits need to be limited to five to ten minutes every couple hours." He glanced around at everyone else. "The rest of you should go home, get some rest."

He returned to addressing Castle and Jim. "Let a nurse know and she can direct you to the room where Miss Beckett is."

"Thank you, Dr. Davidson," Jim answered.

The doctor nodded generally to everyone and then left.

And the room abruptly filled with a rush of sound for the first time in hours as everyone seemed to speak at once.

His mother exclaimed, "Oh, thank God!"

"She's going to be all right," Ryan breathed.

"Fiancé?" emitted Esposito.

"Dad?"

Castle turned and tugged Alexis into his arms, smoothing a hand down her hair, and managing a small, reassuring smile, even though it felt a little unnatural after so many hours of stress. "Kate's going to be fine, see?" He looked up and met his mother's eyes. "Why don't you and Alexis go home, get some sleep? Call the car service. I don't want either of you taking a cab or the subway, not for the next few days." Not until the sniper had been found. He needed to arrange for additional security, his exhausted brain thought.

His mother nodded. "All right."

"But Dad…" Alexis balked.

"Get some rest, sweetie. There's nothing more for you to do here and it's late." He was sure it was, even though he had no idea what time it actually was. "I promise I'll call if anything changes and you and Grams can come back tomorrow."

Alexis nodded reluctantly. "Okay, Dad."

"Fiancé?" It was Lanie who asked it this time, the word, the question, cutting across the room as they all turned to stare at Jim again.

Jim met Castle's eyes. "It'll allow you to see her now. Boyfriend isn't enough, not legally. And Katie would want you there."

Castle nodded slowly, acknowledgement and gratitude in one. And again he had no words. Jim had lied to ensure that he could see Kate, would be treated as family.

"Okay, but don't tell Kate you got her engaged without her say-so," Lanie spoke up and for the first time in what felt like days, there was the faintest hint of humor in her voice.

Now that the doctor had pronounced Kate to be stable and said he was optimistic, it was as if they'd all been given permission to breathe, talk with the expectation that Kate would be fine. She wasn't out of the woods yet but she was stable—for now—and she was tough. Would never go gently into that good night.

Jim's expression eased a little. "I won't if you won't." He glanced around. "Like the doctor said, you should probably go home, get some rest. We'll call if there's any change and you can come back and see Katie tomorrow."

Esposito shifted, his expression darkening. "I don't know about you, bro, but home is the last place I'm going. Not until we catch the son of a bitch who did this," he growled, addressing Ryan.

"Right behind you," Ryan agreed.

Esposito was already heading out the room, radiating so much aggression that it boded no good for anyone in his path, but Ryan lingered, looking to Castle. "You'll stay with her," Ryan asked, although it sounded more like confirmation than a question.

Castle nodded. "I'm not going anywhere." He didn't think he would be physically capable of leaving the hospital. When he'd had to leave Alexis at kindergarten for the first time, he'd practically had a panic attack and hyperventilated right on the sidewalk the further he got from the building. Now, if he tried to leave Kate, he would likely collapse. No, he wasn't leaving. Was never ever going to leave Kate again, he thought without the slightest sense of hyperbole. (Not that standing with her this time had saved her.)

Ryan nodded and then left in Esposito's wake.

His mother and Alexis were the next to go, after he hugged them both, and Lanie accompanied them, after stern and repeated injunctions to both him and Jim to call if anything changed with Kate's condition and assurances that she'd be back in a few hours.

"Let's go see Katie, son."

Castle let out a shaky breath and nodded. God, yes, he wanted to see Kate. Needed to see Kate. Needed to see her the way he needed oxygen.

But for all that, he froze in the doorway of the room a nurse led them to as if he'd run into an invisible wall, his feet, his legs abruptly failing him. _Oh god._ "Kate," he breathed.

Jim, at least, managed to make it into the room before collapsing into the bedside chair.

Castle wasn't ready for this. Not that anything could have prepared him for seeing Kate like this.

His Kate was a warrior, the strongest person he'd ever met. He knew, intellectually, that Kate was shorter than he was, not by much admittedly, and generally had a smaller build than he did. But he never thought of her as being weak or small in any sense. She had such presence, the force of her personality, that radiated out of her. She could—and did—intimidate hardened thugs who were almost twice her size.

Now—he'd never thought, never even imagined that Kate could look like this. It was just… wrong. Felt like he was seeing something that went against all the rules of nature, like grass that was hot pink or snow in the Sahara.

He'd seen her when she was sleeping and if he'd thought about it, he would have expected her to look as if she were sleeping.

She didn't. Not only because she was intubated, the tube emerging from between her pale lips and connected to a ventilator, an IV on one hand and a monitor on one finger, along with a couple other tubes, but also because she was too still, too limp, as if all her Beckett spark and intensity had been snuffed out. The steady sound of beeps from the heart monitor filled the room with a comforting rhythm, every beep seeming to say, _alive. Alive. Alive._ (It was the only reassuring thing about the room.)

She looked… small and weak and so fragile, three words that he'd never thought to associate with his Kate. She looked… If it weren't for the wires and tubes, she looked… dead, as if she could be in a coffin—he flinched away from the thought, everything inside him cringing. She was so pale, her hair and eyebrows the only thing adding color to her form. Her very lips were pale, although—thank God—no longer blue-ish in tint.

She was so still, unmoving. If it weren't for the steady beeps of the heart monitor, he couldn't be sure she was breathing.

All these machines hooked up to her, helping her breathe, giving her blood, nutrients, performing all the daily bodily functions that her own body could no longer take care of. It was terrifying and so very not-Kate but the machines were keeping her alive and that was all he cared about. Every reassuring spike on the screen of the heart monitor, every beep filling his ears with its metronomic chant— _alive. Alive. Alive._

He clung to the word like a lifeline, as if it were a magic spell keeping him from going to pieces (and he honestly felt like it might be) and finally, finally managed to uproot his feet from the floor, move into the room and fall into the other chair beside Jim.

She needed to get through the next 24 hours before the doctors would pronounce her out of danger. Castle didn't even need to ask to know that neither he nor Jim was going to be sleeping or going more than 10 feet away from the room for more than a couple minutes at a time until those 24 hours were over. His mother, Alexis, Lanie, the boys—they all loved Kate but he and Jim were the ones who loved her most.

He loved her—and he'd killed her.

Her heart had stopped and the doctors, these machines, had brought her back to life. He had only let her be shot. He'd opened up her mother's case again, out of curiosity, his own wish to show off and impress the Detective who had already shown herself to be the most extraordinary person he'd ever met, his own arrogance, his wish to help her. He had opened up the rabbit hole and practically invited her to crawl inside. He'd gotten himself taken hostage by Dick Coonan and made Beckett shoot her best chance of finding out who was really behind her mother's death. And Coonan's death had awoken the Dragon.

He choked on rising bile. "I'm so sorry," he croaked and he wasn't sure if he was addressing Kate or Jim.

"Sorry? For what?"

He didn't look at Jim, couldn't look at Jim. This man, who had trusted him with Kate. Castle felt like a fraud. Jim needed to know.

"I did this. This is my fault."

Jim sucked in a sharp breath and lurched upright.

Castle went on talking, forcing the words out through a scratchy throat and a mouth that had gone dry. "I opened up her mother's case two years ago and I encouraged her to look into it again. I was the one who started this."

"Rick, _no_ ," Jim contradicted forcefully, his voice rising enough that they both automatically looked to Kate, although—of course, terribly—there was no response. Jim lowered his voice but still sounded authoritative, firm. "This is not your fault. You didn't know—you couldn't know what would happen. And I know my daughter and I'm pretty sure that even without you, she would have looked into Johanna's case again. Katie—" he choked a little on the name, swallowed hard, and then went on, his voice not quite steady, "she doesn't give up. She—she might have put Johanna's case aside years ago but I always rather expected her to go back and look into it again, when she felt… stronger. And John Raglan was the one who called Katie back in January that got this started; you had nothing to do with that."

That wasn't strictly true. Castle remembered perfectly well what Raglan had said in that coffee shop about Coonan's death getting people's attention.

"You shouldn't blame yourself, Rick," Jim went on, more gently. "Katie's told me that you… didn't let her drown in her mother's case. You saved her, Rick. You did. So don't blame yourself."

"I—I wasn't fast enough, in the cemetery. I—I should have been faster." If only he'd realized what the flash of light was sooner, if only he'd been half a step quicker…

"No, Rick, you couldn't have moved faster than a bullet. No one can. And you tried to save her and… and that counts. And Katie's going to be fine."

He blinked. "She is," he agreed gruffly.

His eyes went up to focus on the screen of the heart monitor, watching the reassuring spikes measuring her heart beats. And then he scooted his chair forward so he could reach out and slide his hand into Kate's limp one, holding it gently.

"She's going to be fine," he repeated more quietly.

They were both silent for a long minute so the only sound was the steady beeps from the heart monitor.

"Katie won't blame you either," Jim told him softly. "She… she always says you make everything easier. You make her life better."

He choked a little. "She makes everything better for me too."

Jim didn't respond.

They both returned to watching Kate, keeping careful vigil over every spike on the screen of her heart monitor until Castle felt as if his heart, too, must have started beating in time with hers. He lowered his gaze to her hand, cradled in his, so still and so limp. It was odd to hold her hand when it was so unresponsive, to have her fingers not curling around his, but he took some comfort in the warmth of her hand, the warmth of _life_.

All too soon, though, the nurse entered the room, making a notation on the chart in her hand of Kate's vital signs, and then, apparently satisfied, turned to face them.

"Her vital signs are good and holding steady, which is an encouraging sign. I'm afraid your visiting time is up for now, though. You'll have to watch her through the window."

It almost physically hurt to slide his hand away from Kate's and walk out of the room but he managed it, helped only by telling himself it was necessary to make sure Kate recovered. For once in his life, he was going to follow every instruction he was given to the letter if it would ensure Kate's recovery.

Once they were outside the room and once more seated on the chairs in the hallway, the nurse turned to them, reaching one hand into her pocket. "Oh, yes, one more thing, I was told to return these to you. We needed to remove them for the surgery but you can keep these safe for her."

The hand Castle lifted to accept the two small clear plastic bags the nurse was holding out was shaking with a renewed swell of emotion. Kate's necklace with her mother's ring. Her dad's watch.

"Thank you," Castle rasped out.

The nurse gave him a sympathetic look and then bustled away.

Beside him, he heard Jim suck in a shaky breath. "My old watch," he husked and then, suddenly, terribly, he dissolved into tears, curling over his knees as his entire body shook with sobs.

Oh shit. After so many long hours of stoicism, the dam of Jim's emotions—all his fear and all his worry over Kate—had given way.

He shouldn't be seeing this, Castle thought. It was too much, too personal, too intimate. No one except Johanna Beckett and possibly Kate herself should ever witness Jim reduced to this, crying uncontrollably. It was terrible and uncomfortable and painful and part of Castle wanted to flee but he couldn't do that. Perhaps the only saving grace was that the corridor was mostly empty at that hour of the night with only a scattered handful of nurses, who were all well-trained enough (or too accustomed to seeing people break down) to be watching.

He placed an awkward, tentative hand on the other man's shoulder. "Jim," he began helplessly and then stopped. What could he say? He couldn't tell Jim not to cry. It was selfish and stupid of him to not want to see this. Especially after he had broken down just as badly hours ago. "Kate's going to be fine," he finally said gently, entirely inadequately.

Jim managed a nod and then lifted his head, visibly and audibly trying to control himself, giving a few hiccupping breaths. "I'm—I'm sorry. I'm all right." He scrubbed a hand down his face, trying to even his breathing, and then lurched to his feet. "I'll be right back. Excuse me."

Castle stood up and returned to the window to watch Kate, focusing on the reassuring spikes on the screen of the heart monitor. _Please, Kate, you have to get better. For your dad, for me, for everyone. We need you, Kate._

Jim returned in a little while, composed again although his eyes were red-rimmed. "I'm sorry," he said again as he settled back in his chair.

Castle shook his head as he, too, resumed his seat. "You don't need to apologize. I—I broke down earlier too," he admitted.

"Has Katie ever told you about why she wears my old watch, Rick?" Jim asked quietly, breaking a brief silence.

He had a flash of memory of that night more than two years ago. The tears glistening in her eyes as she'd told him about what had happened to her mother, the rather wry smile she'd forced afterwards when she'd tried to joke, "So I guess your Nikki Heat has a backstory now." And the way his heart had clenched in his chest and he'd realized simultaneously that she was even more extraordinary than he'd realized and that he could really and truly fall for her. (He'd never thought he could pinpoint a time or a place for falling in love with her but now, it occurred to him that maybe, perhaps, that moment was it.) "She told me that it's a symbol of the life she saved," he answered, very softly.

Jim choked a little. "She did save me."

"She's good at that," he murmured, the ghost of a smile curving his lips. Kate had saved him too. Saved him from writer's block but more importantly, saved him from drowning in meaninglessness, saved him from loneliness. Because he had been lonely, lonely in spite of almost constantly being surrounded by people, lonely in spite of Alexis and his mother. Lonely and discontent too. He had told himself he was happy—and of course, Alexis did make him happy, always had from the first moment he set eyes on her in the hospital—but he realized now that, aside from Alexis, his life had been largely empty and he'd been discontented with his life. His flings, the parties he went to, his frivolity had been a façade, a distraction, and a search for more, a search for something he couldn't even put a word to. And he'd found that something more in Kate, at the precinct—had found a purpose, another home, a family, friendship and camaraderie of a sort he'd never known before, and love. Perhaps most importantly, he'd found the love he'd always dreamed of.

"Yes, she is." Jim let out a shuddering breath and scrubbed a hand down his face and it was a minute or two before he went on. "Johanna gave me that watch for our 15th anniversary. I loved it, wore it every day. And it meant even more after Johanna… died. I gave it to Katie the day I got out of rehab. It was… a symbol of my promise to her that I meant it, that I was really going to overcome my demons, stay sober this time. That I would stop letting her down."

Castle's hand automatically went to his pocket where he'd put Kate's watch and her mother's ring away. No wonder the watch meant so much to Kate. Not just a reminder of the life she'd saved but as a tangible, visible symbol of her father's return to the living. He was suddenly incredibly, ridiculously glad all over again that he'd managed to find and repair Kate's watch last year after her old apartment had exploded.

Jim pushed up the sleeve of his shirt a little, enough to show the band of his watch. "Katie gave this to me to mark one year of my staying sober." He straightened his sleeve again, curving his right hand over where the watch was as if to reassure himself that he still had his watch. And Jim didn't need to say anything more for Castle to understand that Jim viewed the watch Kate had given him as a talisman of sorts to guard against future relapses. And now, of all times, Jim was probably more tempted to drink—to drown his worry over Kate—than he had been in years, possibly ever before.

Not that Castle thought for a minute that Jim would relapse and it occurred to him that Kate's strength might be just as much an inheritance from her father as it was from her mother. Somehow, perhaps naturally, Castle had focused mostly on what Kate had inherited from her mother rather than her father since Johanna Beckett's death was the most formative event of Kate's life and as in almost any murder, a consideration of the murder victim's character was an essential part of solving the case. But for the first time, belatedly, he thought that Jim's character would provide just as much insight into Kate as Johanna's did.

He wasn't sure what to say. How did a person respond to a story so personal, so poignant? "Thank you for telling me," he finally murmured, entirely inadequately.

"Katie trusts you, Rick. She wouldn't mind you knowing."

Ridiculously, irrationally, he felt tears pricking at the back of his eyes at this statement. She trusted him—but he hadn't been fast enough to save her. She had listened to him about her mom's case but then he'd left Montgomery to die and Kate had been shot. He didn't know why she should trust him anymore.

But he thought it might kill him if she stopped trusting him.

He wasn't making any sense even to himself.

He heard Kate's voice in his head, teasing, _you're frequently nonsensical, Castle, so what else is new?_ (His heart clenched. For the first time ever, it hurt to hear her voice in his head the way he so often did. Hurt because he didn't know if he would ever hear her voice again for real. Would Kate still have her Beckett snark and sparkle? He thought this tightness in his chest might never go away until he heard Kate tease him again, until he saw her roll her eyes at him again.)

"Kate would hate that we're talking about her like this," he suddenly blurted out.

Jim gave a huff that might have been laughter if it had been allowed to grow up. "She would. When she wakes up, she'll kick our butts for talking about her."

"As long as she wakes up…" he mumbled unthinkingly and then could have kicked himself for it.

Jim sucked in a sharp breath and then, almost in unison, they were both standing and going over to peer through the window into Kate's room, watching the reassuringly even spikes on the heart monitor.

"She's going to be fine," he said, yet again. And wondered how many times he would say that sentence before he could convince his heart to believe it.

"Yes, she is."

And he and Jim settled in for a long night of keeping vigil over Kate's beating heart.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: Yes, it's Josh. I decided to let him keep his role in saving Kate's life since in this universe, Kate and Josh are total strangers so it doesn't matter._

 _Thank you, everyone, for reading, reviewing, following, and/or adding this fic to their favorites._


	38. Chapter 37: Aftermath 2

Author's Note: The aftermath continues.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 37_

Castle felt like he passed through the next 24 hours in something of a fugue state. He had no clear sense of time passing, the hours were punctuated only by the times when the nurse visited to check on Kate's vital signs and he and Jim were then allowed to spend a few minutes in Kate's room. He and Jim managed to doze off and on, drifting off for a few minutes at a time out of sheer exhaustion before being jolted awake by the noise of the hospital.

At one point, his phone startled him by buzzing in his pocket and he hurried down the corridor and out of the ICU to answer it once he saw that it was Esposito, calling to give him a quick update on what they'd discovered so far—a lot of nothing—and to ask how Beckett was doing—holding steady, which was the best possible news right then. He was startled to see that the clock on his phone indicated that it was almost 11 a.m. Only 24 hours earlier, they'd been arriving at the cemetery. God, had it really only been 24 hours since they'd buried Roy, since Kate had been shot? It felt as if Roy's funeral had happened years ago. He wondered how Evelyn and their kids were doing.

His next indication of time passing was when his mother and Alexis returned, armed with coffee and sandwiches. It took his, his mother's, and Alexis's combined efforts to persuade Jim to step out of the ICU and join them but they managed it.

He almost inhaled the coffee but tried to pass on the sandwiches. His stomach twisted at the mere thought of eating. "Mother, I really don't think…" he began only to fall silent as his mother fixed him with one of her looks, one that indicated that she had made up her mind with all of Martha Rodgers's own brand of stubbornness.

"You have not eaten in more than 24 hours, Richard, and collapsing from a lack of food isn't going to do Katherine any good." She turned her minatory gaze to Jim. "You too, Jim. Eat."

He and Jim ate.

This was one of those times when arguing with his mother would be like trying to persuade the tide not to come in and he was too tired to argue anyway. So he dutifully ate his sandwich, although afterwards he couldn't have identified what kind of sandwich it was, and had to admit that the coffee and the sandwich made him feel almost human again.

Jim put away his mostly-finished sandwich. "Thank you, Martha, Alexis. This helped. I'm going back to sit with Katie." He met Castle's eyes. "You should stay, Rick, take it easy for a while. I'll stay with Katie. You've been awake all night."

Jim had been too but Castle's sleep-deprived mind was too sluggish to argue and he did need to spend more time with Alexis. "All right," he gave in.

Jim disappeared back into the ICU and Castle fought against the urge to follow. He didn't like being so far away from Kate, even knowing that it was a matter of feet separating him from Kate. He felt as if an invisible string was keeping him tied to Kate and trying to tug him back to her. But then again, Kate had always seemed to exert a gravitational pull on him and it was worse now.

But he did need to spend some time with Alexis. He knew she was still scared and upset over Kate and he couldn't fail Alexis too. He lifted his hand to touch Alexis's cheek, tugging lightly on a lock of her hair. "Did you manage to sleep?"

Alexis nodded. "Yeah."

He wasn't quite sure he believed her; there were shadows under her eyes, the evidence of a night of uneasy sleep always obvious given Alexis's fair skin. But he decided not to call her on it. "You're sure it's okay for you to be missing school, pumpkin?"

Alexis made a face. "It's fine. We're not doing that much in class now that AP exams are over and anyway, even if I went, I wouldn't be able to concentrate." Her voice wavered a little. "Don't make me go, Dad. I don't think I could stand it, having to sit still and try to pay attention when Kate is… when Kate hasn't woken up yet."

He tugged her into his arms. "Okay, Alexis, you don't need to go. You can take the rest of this week off and maybe go back from Monday. Kate will be awake by then." She had to be. It was—what day of the week was it again? He had to think and then remembered. It was Thursday. Roy's funeral had been Wednesday. Kate should wake up sometime today. She was almost out of the danger zone.

He pressed a kiss to her cheek and Alexis wrinkled her nose a little. "Your face is all scratchy, Dad. You should shave. We brought your shaving kit and some clothes for you."

He attempted a smile. "Thank you, sweetie."

"Oh, and I called Gina."

He blinked at Alexis, wondering if he'd gotten to the stage of hearing things. "You—what—why?" he asked blankly. What possible reason would Alexis have for calling Gina? His dazed mind struggled and failed to think of a reason. Alexis and Gina weren't close and to his knowledge, Alexis had never reached out to Gina herself before.

"I told her what happened. She gave you an extension."

An extension. An extension of what—oh. His brain belatedly remembered. The draft of _Heat Rises_ was due next week. He'd forgotten—or more accurately, simply didn't care. What did his next book matter? If anything happened to Kate, he would never write again, he was sure of that.

But Alexis had remembered and taken care of it.

He reached out and pulled Alexis into his arms. "Thank you, pumpkin. You might have just saved my life," he attempted to joke, "since I'm pretty sure Gina would have killed me if I'd been late with the draft again." The humor fell flat and Alexis only curled in closer to him.

"I want to help. I want to _do_ something to help Kate but I can't so I figured I can at least help you so you can focus on Kate and that's the best I can do right now."

His little girl. His big, little girl. He heard Kate's voice in his head: _Alexis is more mature and responsible than you are, Castle, and you know it._ He suddenly, absurdly wanted to cry just from the way he could so clearly hear her voice in his head.

"You do help," he assured her. "You help just by being you."

He was rewarded as Alexis's expression brightened a little. "Oh good. And Dad, I was thinking, what about Kate's apartment?"

Kate's apartment. Oh shit. Another thing he'd forgotten. He was failing at everything right now. He'd failed at keeping Kate safe, had failed at saving Roy. Was failing to make Alexis feel better, failing in his responsibilities to Black Pawn (although he couldn't bring himself to care much about that), and now he was failing to help Kate, again, in taking care of the aspects of her life that she wasn't able to take care of right now. They had been planning to finish emptying out her apartment this weekend, hadn't they, before everything with Johanna Beckett's case had blown everything to hell. He couldn't leave Kate. At this point, he expected to be living in the hospital for the foreseeable future until Kate was discharged.

He had to cudgel his sluggish mind into functioning, trying to plan something.

"Oh right, thanks for reminding me, sweetie," he began. "I'd arranged for some movers to come and pack up her furniture so maybe you and Grams can supervise and then accompany the movers to put Kate's things into Grams's storage space?"

He glanced at his mother, who looked delighted at the prospect of telling a bunch of men what to do. "Of course, Richard, leave everything to me."

He grimaced a little. Well, it was only supervision of movers. It would hardly give his mother much scope for exercising her dramatic talents, so to speak, and complicate things. He would see about calling Lanie, seeing if she'd be willing to help pack the smaller stuff that was left.

"Tell Kate not to worry, Dad," Alexis volunteered. "We can take care of everything with her apartment so she can focus on getting better."

He didn't know how he had lucked out so much with Alexis, he really didn't. "I know I can rely on you, sweetie," he said rather gruffly. "And I know it'll make Kate feel better."

Once she woke up. She had to wake up.

He persuaded his mother and Alexis to leave, reassuring them, again, that he would call if anything changed with Kate's condition. He had to force himself not to run down the corridor to return to Kate's room. The half hour or so he'd just spent away from her room felt like half a day. It occurred to him that if Kate were awake, she would be snapping at him for hovering and not leaving her alone. God, he wanted her to snap at him and grumble about giving her space.

He stopped to stare in Kate's window, soaking in the sight of her, still breathing, her heart still beating, as if it were oxygen, the air he needed to breathe. It would be another half hour at least before the nurse returned and he and Jim would be allowed inside the room but for now, he just needed to see her, keep his eyes on her. Felt irrationally that he needed to stay close, as if his very proximity was anchoring her to life. Or maybe it was the other way around and her proximity was anchoring him to life.

* * *

Castle and Jim both jerked to their feet when Dr. Davidson approached, along with the nurse who had been checking Kate's vital signs today and whose name Castle vaguely remembered was Nina.

"Good evening, Mr. Beckett, Mr. Castle," Dr. Davidson greeted them as they followed him into Kate's room and watched as he checked Kate's pulse and then the screen of the heart monitor. "I see from Miss Beckett's chart that her vital signs have held steady all day. Her pulse is strong so I'm confident in pronouncing her entirely out of danger now."

Jim almost sagged with relief and Castle instinctively grasped Jim's arm, his own knees feeling less than stable. Oh thank God. Kate was out of danger.

"We'll take her off the anesthesia now but it will probably take her a few hours to wake up. Sleep is the best thing for her right now so we'll leave her to wake up naturally. At this point, someone should stay in the room with her until she wakes up and you can press the call button when she does so we can extubate her and generally check how she's doing again."

"Can other people come to see her now?" Castle thought to ask, remembering Alexis and her pale, stricken expression.

"During visiting hours but no more than one or two visitors are allowed in her room at any given time," Dr. Davidson answered and then added, with a hint of apology in his tone, "It's ICU policy."

Castle nodded. "Understood."

"Thank you, Doctor," Jim remembered to add.

The doctor nodded and then he was striding out of the room while Nina lingered to give them both an understanding smile. "Miss Beckett will be fine. All her vital signs are pointing to recovery so try not to worry."

Castle tried but couldn't quite manage a smile. He appreciated the effort but knew it was entirely beyond him to stop worrying. He would worry until Kate was back on her feet and back to work again—and then he would still worry because of the nature of her job. Yeah, he was never going to stop worrying about Kate. The best he could hope for was that he could return to his usual confidence in Kate's physical abilities that had allowed him to keep his protective instincts under control until now.

He and Jim settled into the visitor chairs, watching as Nina adjusted something on one of the machines attached to Kate, likely the anesthesia, he guessed. Castle was sure he was holding his breath but Kate's heart monitor held steady.

The moment Nina left, Castle was scooting his chair forward and leaning over so he could slide his hand gently around hers. It wasn't the most comfortable position but he decided then and there that he was going to keep holding her hand like this until she woke up and possibly even after that. He was never going to let her go again.

And he and Jim settled in to wait. Again. Still. But this time, at least, the wait was easier with the reassurance that Kate was out of danger.

He had drifted off into an uneasy doze when he abruptly awoke, for a moment confused about what had awoken him when he realized it had been a twitch of Kate's fingers in his.

He surged to his feet, leaning over her, not daring to breathe as he stared at her. Please, oh please…

He felt another twitch of her fingers and then her lashes fluttered and then, as he watched, her eyes opened, slowly, blinking a couple times before focusing on him.

"Kate," he breathed.

She made a soft sound and then her eyes flared wide with panic, the sound of her heart rate abruptly increasing, as she gagged on the breathing tube.

He was peripherally aware of Jim frantically pressing the call button while he focused on Kate. "Kate, ssh, it's okay," he hurriedly said. "Don't try to talk. You're going to be okay. It'll be a minute until the doctor gets here to remove the breathing tube so just wait. You're okay, Kate. You're going to be fine," he soothed, with no very clear idea of what he was saying.

Her fingers tightened a little around his and she blinked and then frowned and a single tear slipped down her cheek.

Oh god oh god oh god. She was in pain. She had to be in pain. The amount of pain she must be in was killing him because if it was bad enough for her to cry, it had to be excruciating. He couldn't stand it. Where was the doctor, damn it?

He swallowed hard. "You're going to be okay, Kate. Don't panic, please. Just watch me, focus on me, Kate. You'll get through this," he babbled.

And then, finally—thank God—there was a bustle as Dr. Davidson, Nina and another nurse came rushing in. Castle found himself unceremoniously pushed aside and he exchanged quick glances with Jim as they watched as Dr. Davidson leaned over Kate. "Miss Beckett, I'm going to remove the tube so try to relax and on the count of three, blow out, all right? One… two… three."

He gently but quickly pulled the tube out and Castle fought the urge not to cringe at the sight. Oh god, that looked terrible and he suspected it felt worse.

Kate gasped and choked a little, her body spasming, and a few more tears escaped her eyes as she coughed.

He glanced at Jim to see that Jim looked on the verge of collapse, as if he was in more pain than Kate was. Which was very likely true. Castle knew from painful experience that it was a million times easier to suffer pain oneself than to watch one's child in pain. He flinched.

"Good to see you awake, Miss Beckett," Dr. Davidson said gently. "I'm Dr. Davidson. You gave your family and friends quite a scare but you're going to be all right. I know your throat must be sore and we'll give you a few ice chips in a few minutes. Just try to breathe normally for me."

Castle couldn't help it and stepped forward, thankful when Nina made room for him so he could hold Kate's hand again. "Kate."

Jim stepped forward as well and Kate's eyes flickered to him. "Katie," Jim choked out. "Oh God, Katie…"

Kate blinked and then her eyes flicked between him and Jim and Castle somehow understood.

"She's going to be okay, Jim," he reassured quietly, placing his free hand on Jim's shoulder. Even now, Kate didn't want her father to be worried.

Dr. Davidson checked Kate's vital signs again and then nodded at Nina and she stepped forward. "Open your mouth, Miss Beckett."

Kate did so with an obedience that made Castle feel absurdly like crying because his badass Beckett was never meek and he had never seen her listen to anyone's instructions so quietly. Even when she'd been suffering from hypothermia after the freezer and hadn't been able to feel much of anything, let alone walk, she'd argued with the EMT. Not for the first time, he wondered if Kate would be changed, if she would have lost any of her Detective Beckett fire. Kate would hate that, would never allow it to happen. Right?

Nina placed a few small ice chips in Kate's mouth and then waited until after a few minutes, Kate opened her mouth again and Nina gave Kate another few ice chips.

"There's a morphine drip attached to your IV to help you manage your pain and you can use this button here to up your dosage if the pain worsens," Dr. Davidson told Kate. "I'm afraid you have a long recovery ahead of you but the important thing is that you're out of danger now. Get some sleep, Miss Beckett. We'll go over your prognosis in more detail tomorrow."

Kate managed a small nod and then the doctor and nurses left the room, leaving them alone, just their little family unit.

"'m okay, Dad," Kate croaked. She paused, seeming to have to gather her strength to continue and Castle tried not to wince. Seeing Kate like this was physically painful and he could only imagine what it was like for Jim. "Don't look like that," she mumbled, her voice raspy and barely audible.

Jim choked a little. "Sorry, Katie-girl. I'll be better, I promise, don't worry about me."

Kate's fingers twitched in his hand and he tightened his grip on her fingers as much as he dared. Her eyes were already getting a little hazy, the morphine kicking in, but she blinked a few times to try to focus.

"Tired," she whispered.

"Sleep, Kate," he said gently. "You're going to be okay."

She blinked her eyes open again. "Castle…" she slurred, the two syllables of his name blurring together. "Stay."

He bit back a sob. "Of course, Kate. I'm not going anywhere," he promised.

She was asleep again.

But she had woken up, was out of danger. She was going to be fine, he told himself for what must have been the billionth time or so in the last 36 hours. And for the first time, the words felt like more than a reassuring platitude. For the first time, he really believed it.

It took some doing but he managed to persuade Jim to leave and get some sleep, succeeding more because of Kate's last admonition than because of his own persuasive abilities. And then he sent off a small flurry of text messages, to Espo and Ryan and Lanie and Alexis, each with the same message: _She woke up. She's out of danger._

The responses were immediate, all with some variant of _Thank God_ and a request to tell Kate that they'd be visiting tomorrow.

His duty to the rest of their family done, he settled back into his chair to watch Kate sleep.

* * *

Castle had managed to fall into an uneasy doze when his head slipped off his hand and he awoke with a jerk, blinking, and then immediately lifted his head to check on Kate to see that her eyes were open.

He immediately stood up to lean over her. "Kate, hey."

She managed a twitch of her lips as a substitute for a smile and he thought his heart might burst. "Hey," she breathed.

He forced a small smile, the expression feeling foreign on his face after the last couple days. "Were you watching me sleep? I have it on the best authority that staring's creepy."

She gave a weak little chuckle that broke off on a gasp as she winced. "Hurts to laugh."

Shit. His smile fell off his face as his own heart clenched. God, what was he doing, hurting her more?

"Do you need more morphine?"

She frowned and shook her head just a little. "No, don't wanna. Makes me feel… loopy." Her tone was rather petulant. It was adorable.

He lifted a careful hand to stroke her cheek, unable to resist touching her. "Okay but don't try to be a super-hero, Kate. You don't need to be in pain." His throat closed up and his voice went husky with emotion. "I can't… don't make me watch you suffer."

"Mm'kay," she agreed tiredly—and something tugged at his heart because the ready acquiescence wasn't like her. As relieved as he was that she had agreed, he found himself irrationally wishing that she had argued with him. "Dad?"

"I sent him home to get some sleep. He'll be back in the morning."

She nodded a little. "'Lexis?"

His heart filled. God, he loved her for asking about his daughter even now, lying in a hospital bed recovering from a major surgery. "She and my mother are at home. They'll be visiting in the morning too."

"Castle."

"Yes, what do you need?" he asked immediately. He would do anything for her, would walk barefoot across broken glass if it would help her recover.

"Kiss me."

He blinked, for a split second convinced that he was hallucinating in his sleep-deprived haze. She wouldn't—couldn't possibly be asking him to kiss her now when she'd been fighting for her life just a day ago.

A faint frown creased her brow as he failed to respond. "I must look awful and I—"

He cut her off with his lips, kissing her softly, lingering for just a few seconds. And felt some of the jagged shards of terror that seemed to have embedded themselves in his heart melt away, the gashes scored onto his heart over the last day mending at the touch of her lips, the way she kissed him back.

He drew back slowly, watching as her eyelids fluttered, her gaze hazy, although he was reasonably sure that it was more a side effect of the morphine than of his kiss.

"You don't look awful, Kate," he whispered. "You're beautiful."

A ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "Liar."

"Not a lie," he countered. "It's the truth." She was pale and wan, her very lips colorless, but she was still beautiful—beautiful and wonderfully, amazingly alive.

"Then you must look worse than I do."

He grimaced and rubbed a hand down his bristly chin. "Makes me look more rugged," he attempted to quip. He didn't doubt that he looked terrible, not that it mattered.

"Scruffy look… reminds me of when we met at your book party," she mumbled. She blinked a few times, slowly, and he could see that she was once more starting to drift back asleep. The morphine really was making her groggy.

He touched her cheek with his fingers in a light caress. "We can talk more later, Kate. For now, just sleep."

"Mm," she murmured. "Castle?"

"I'll be right here when you wake up, Kate," he promised.

"Good," she mumbled. "You owe me a question."

He made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. "I'll ask you," he managed to choke. He bent and kissed her forehead gently. "I promise I'll ask you properly."

"You'd better," she slurred, her eyes closing. "You sleep too."

"I'll try."

He stroked a careful hand down her hair even as he blinked back the ridiculous, stupid tears that insisted on welling up in his eyes.

He was thankful that her eyes were closed so she couldn't see the tears he couldn't quite hold back. And it was only then that he realized just how afraid he had been that she would be changed, would be left somehow less than her old badass Beckett self, as a result of the shooting. Even when his fear over her life had been eased, he had worried, her uncharacteristic passivity bothering him. Now he was reassured. She was still Beckett. She might be weak and drugged up but she was still his bossy Beckett.

And that was all he needed.

* * *

Dr. Davidson returned bright and early the next morning to check on Kate.

"Good morning, Miss Beckett, Mr. Castle."

"It's Detective Beckett," Castle found himself correcting automatically. It sounded odd to his own ears to hear Kate referred to as Miss Beckett and he assumed Kate would prefer to be called Detective Beckett.

"'s okay," Kate contradicted, although her voice was still too weak to make the word accurate. "Miss Beckett is fine, Doctor."

Dr. Davidson blinked, his eyes flickering between Kate and Castle before apparently deciding not to wonder at it. "Well, then, how are you feeling this morning?"

"Tired," Kate sighed.

"It's normal to feel exhausted after undergoing any sort of surgical procedure as your body recovers from a significant trauma and I'm afraid your surgery was a long and particularly invasive one so you will likely feel exhausted for a good while to come."

Kate nodded. "My recovery—how long will it take?"

Dr. Davidson let out a breath. "Well, the bullet lacerated your pulmonary artery. We were able to repair it and stop the bleeding and then repair the other damage but you are facing a long and difficult recovery. You will need to stay here in the ICU for a week at least, at which time you will be transferred to the general wing of the hospital for another week or so, as you regain some more strength and mobility. After that, even after you are released from the hospital, you will need to be on near-total bed rest for at least two weeks."

"Two weeks," Kate breathed in clear dismay, despite the softness of her tone.

"I'm afraid so. You must allow your body to heal before exerting yourself and possibly putting too much strain on your heart and the repaired artery. Following that, you may undertake some minimal exercise for another two weeks and then you will face about two months of physical therapy to build up your strength. So in total, you are facing a recovery period of at least three months before you will be back to normal."

Castle tried not to wince at every word, the lengthy process facing Kate. Three months. She wouldn't be back to normal—which meant she wouldn't be able to work—for at least another three months.

But she was alive, he told himself, and she would be back to normal. What was a three month span of time compared to that?

It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how good the NYPD's health insurance coverage was. He should look into that. He rather doubted that it would cover the extent of physical therapy to get Kate back into her usual kickass physical condition. He made a mental note to talk to the hospital, ensure that Kate would have a private room once she was moved out of the ICU and that she would get the best physical therapy money could buy.

"Three months," Kate repeated. "Oh."

"I know it's a long time but you are expected to make a full and complete recovery with no lasting consequences," Dr. Davidson consoled.

"Yes, thank you, Doctor."

"Now, let's see how you're doing." Dr. Davidson proceeded to check Kate's various vital signs, listened to her heart beat through a stethoscope, asked Kate to try to lift her arms.

Castle fought to preserve his poker face and not interfere or otherwise show his emotions. It was hard to watch, to see Kate, the strong, capable Detective, reduced to this, unable to lift her arms more than a few inches and then not able to keep them raised for more than a few seconds at a time. Images, memories of Beckett sprinting in her high heels or otherwise man-handling criminals who were almost twice her size flashed through his mind and he suddenly felt like crying. Stupidly. She would do all that again. It would take time but she would recover, would once again be the kickass Detective he had first fallen in love with.

By the time the doctor finished, Kate was wan and looking even more exhausted than she had been.

Castle stood up and cupped her cheek gently the moment Dr. Davidson left. "Sleep, Kate."

"Doing nothing but sleep," Kate protested in a mumble that rather made a mockery of her complaint.

"Sleep is the best thing for you right now. Besides," he added, "your dad will be back soon and he'll worry if he sees you like this."

Kate appeared to have to muster the energy to narrow her eyes at him. "I see what you're doing, Castle."

Yes, she was definitely still Beckett. "I'm still right, though, Kate," he told her, assuming one of his 'Daddy knows best' looks that he'd developed when Alexis was little (and which had lost all efficacy as of a few years ago). Under normal circumstances, he had no doubt that Beckett would, at best, snort and roll her eyes at him if he'd ever tried using such a look on her before. But these weren't normal circumstances.

"Yes, fine," Kate agreed rather petulantly but her eyes were already drifting closed, belying the words and the tone.

Kate had only been sleeping for a couple hours when his mother and Alexis showed up, the minute visiting hours began and even before Jim had returned. His heart clenched a little at this evidence of how scared and worried Alexis and his mother must have been. He hadn't thought about it much, had been too focused on Kate.

His mother was holding a large bouquet of flowers and he took them as he greeted them outside the ICU to lead them down the hall to Kate's room. "Kate's sleeping now," he cautioned, "but you can stay a little while and at least see her for yourselves. Just remember that only two visitors are allowed in the room at a time."

Alexis stopped abruptly in the doorway of Kate's room, a small sound escaping her. "Oh God, Dad," Alexis almost whimpered. "Kate looks… is she really okay?" She had paled and turned wide, scared eyes up to him, suddenly looking younger than her years. She was too young for this; he hated that his daughter had witnessed a near-fatal shooting and now had to see someone she knew and loved fighting for her life. Alexis had never been so exposed to death or such a serious injury before and he wished with everything in him that she could have retained that innocence longer. She might have read his books but as Castle knew all too well, reading about fictional murders was not at all the same as seeing it in real life.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, meeting her eyes. "The pain meds make her groggy but she really is going to be okay. She's woken up a couple times now and talked. I know the machines are a little scary but she's just sleeping now."

"No, 'm not. Hey, Alexis."

The sound of Kate's weak voice made them all start a little and turn sharply.

"Kate!" Alexis rushed towards the bed, apparently forgetting her immediate fears in surprise, and he tensed as it looked as if Alexis was going to throw herself at Kate to hug her but at the last second, Alexis checked herself, hesitating.

"'s okay, Alexis," Kate murmured, lifting one hand a couple inches.

Alexis visibly relaxed a little as she took Kate's hand in her own, squeezing it for a moment. "Does it hurt a lot, Kate?"

Kate shook her head a little. "They've got me on good pain meds. I'm okay, Alexis, just tired." Kate managed a small smile, the first real smile since she'd awoken, and his heart gave a painful bound at the sight. She was _smiling_ , as wan as it was, and smiling in order to reassure his daughter. Oh, how he loved her.

Alexis smiled, the tension in her form easing. "I'm so glad, Kate. I—I was really worried."

"Sorry I scared you."

It was Alexis's turn to shake her head, decisively enough that it made her hair flare. "It's not your fault. Just… get better, okay, Kate?"

"I will." Kate's eyes flickered to him and then back to Alexis as she managed a pale simulacrum of her teasing smile. "Someone needs to help you keep your Dad out of trouble and I'm kinda used to that job."

Alexis gave a hiccupping sort of laugh. "And you're good at it too."

"Hey, I'm standing right here," he huffed in exaggerated protest.

Alexis glanced around at him and he felt his heart swell with emotion until it felt like his chest was too small to contain it as he saw the smile playing on her lips, the humor brightening her eyes. She looked almost cheerful again. "You know it's true, Dad."

"I don't like it when you two gang up on me," he pretended to grumble.

"Stop pouting, Castle."

He met Kate's eyes—and felt the vise around his heart loosen and dissolve almost entirely. He could see that it took some effort but she was teasing him, although her eyes were soft rather than humorous. She looked and sounded more like Beckett than she had in two days.

He suddenly, absurdly wanted to cry. Again. The stress and worry of the past couple days were clearly making him unhinged.

Alexis laughed softly and he moved to put his arm around her, tugging her in close to his side and with his other hand, he grasped Kate's hand. And for the first time since Roy's funeral, he felt more like himself, the ground once more stable beneath his feet. At this moment, with Alexis and Kate, his entire world was in this room.

"Alexis, aren't you missing school?" Kate asked quietly.

Alexis shrugged. "It's fine, Kate. Don't worry about it."

"You hate missing school."

"I'll go back to school from Monday."

"Okay."

Kate's eyes were starting to droop although he could tell she was fighting it so he stepped in. "Kate should get some more sleep, pumpkin."

"Oh." Alexis looked stricken and he could have kicked himself. He needed to do a better job about remembering Alexis's feelings; his worry over Kate was clouding his mind to the exclusion of all else and that wasn't fair to his daughter.

"No, Alexis, I wanted to see you," Kate spoke up. She was doing a better job of reassuring Alexis than he was. He loved her for it but what kind of father did that make him?

"Feel better, Kate. I'll be back tonight." Alexis hesitated and then bent and kissed Kate's cheek.

Kate gave a rather tired smile. "Take care, Alexis."

Alexis left the room and was immediately replaced by his mother.

"Oh, Katherine darling, you are a sight for sore eyes," she proclaimed, immediately bending and kissing Kate's cheek in turn.

"Thank you for the flowers, Martha."

His mother waved a hand in airy dismissal of Kate's thanks. "Nonsense, Katherine. It's simple good manners to bring flowers to a hospital. Now, you be sure and get plenty of rest. And if Richard starts getting annoying, feel free to kick him out and send him home or just call us and we'll come and make sure he stops hovering."

"Hey!" he huffed. What was it about the women in his family that they all loved ganging up on him?

Kate smiled. "I'll remember but for now, I've been sleeping most of the time so he doesn't bother me."

"Well, the offer stands." His mother cupped Kate's cheek in one be-ringed hand. "Now don't you worry about anything. We'll make sure both Richard and your father eat properly so you just focus on getting better."

"Thank you, Martha."

Just for that, for remembering to include Jim in her reassurances, he decided that his mother could go on another shopping spree and made a mental note to tell her that. Later.

His mother and Alexis left with a promise to return that evening with dinner for him and Jim.

Kate was still awake, fighting her drowsiness. He knew she hated this—Kate never slept this much—but if sleep would help her heal, then he would become a supporter of Maleficent and her spell to make Sleeping Beauty sleep for years.

"You managed to make Alexis smile again."

"I didn't like seeing her look so worried."

He pretended to pout. "Apparently me telling her that you were going to get better didn't do any good so she needed to hear it from you."

"Seeing something with your own eyes makes a difference."

"Skeptical Beckett."

"Still believe in us, though," she mumbled through a yawn.

He felt warmth blossom in his chest. The morphine was making her loopy, reducing her usual emotional reticence so she would say something so unusually sentimental, but she'd still said it. He bent and kissed her softly. "I love you, you know."

"Love you too."

A cough had him starting and he turned to see Jim in the doorway. Jim still looked tired, the ravages of the past few days still visible on his face, but he had clearly made an effort to appear put together, his clothes casual but crisp, and he was freshly-shaved. A slight smile was playing on his lips now and Castle felt himself flushing a little. So much for a private moment.

Kate forced her eyes open again. "Hey, Dad."

"Hi, Katie-bug. How are you feeling?"

Katie-bug? Castle blinked, feeling the first bubble of real amusement in what felt like weeks.

"Just tired. Did you get some sleep?"

"I slept like a rock," Jim answered immediately.

Looking at him, Castle was fairly sure Jim was lying through his teeth but he didn't say anything. Jim was trying to keep Kate from worrying.

"I ran into Martha and Alexis by the elevator," Jim went on. "It was good of them to visit so early."

"Alexis is an early bird," Castle answered obliquely. He didn't want to talk about how scared Alexis had been. Served him right for letting her miss school. Now, thanks to his own lenience, she'd suffered the trauma of seeing someone she loved being shot right in front of her. Meredith might not be a great parent but at least she had never put Alexis through such trauma.

"I think they're worried about you, Rick. Why don't you go get some breakfast or at least some coffee, Rick?" Jim suggested. "I can sit with Katie for a while."

Leave Kate? Castle's first instinctive reaction was viscerally negative and he opened his mouth to refuse but then belatedly realized that Jim had not actually had any time alone with Kate since she'd awoken. "All right. Thanks, Jim," he agreed instead. "I am hungry," he went on mendaciously. "Should I bring you back anything?"

"I already ate," Jim assured him.

"Go on, Castle. I want to talk to my dad, anyway."

He gave Kate's hand a gentle pressure and then left.

He should leave the hospital, get some fresh air, since he hadn't actually been outside in more than 48 hours.

He didn't make it outside.

He made it as far as the hospital lobby, in sight of the large glass doors, before he had to stop, his feet suddenly feeling as heavy as if he'd been fitted with concrete shoes like some mafia victim. And that was nothing to the way his pulse was skyrocketing, his breathing coming fast and shallow.

Sunlight glinted off a car parked outside and he flinched, hearing the distant echo of screams in his head, and then he turned and fled, retreating back until he was well out of sight of the front entrance to the hospital, and collapsed into an empty chair. He rested his elbows on his knees, shutting his eyes as he attempted to get his breathing under control. In and out. In and out.

Kate was fine, out of danger. She was fine. She was fine.

The words formed a reassuring mantra in his mind and he clung to them. It was irrational, he knew that, but it didn't change the fact that he could not leave the hospital. He needed to stay near her. Felt as if every step putting more distance between him and Kate was stretching the string connecting his heart to Kate's to the point of snapping. It was almost physically painful to be away from her. He couldn't leave her. Not yet.

He went instead to the hospital cafeteria, picking up a muffin and a cup of coffee, before returning to the chairs outside the ICU. He ate the muffin in a desultory fashion and gulped down the cheap coffee and heroically refrained from returning immediately to Kate's room. He would give Jim more time with Kate. He, at least, had the benefit of having spent the last two days at Kate's side without leaving her for more than a couple minutes at a time. He didn't know how Jim had managed to leave the hospital and Kate's side but it occurred to him, not for the first time, that Jim had reservoirs of strength that more than equaled Kate's. And getting to know Jim, being able to count Jim as part of his family, was another way in which knowing Kate had enriched his life.

So he waited and let Jim spend uninterrupted time with Kate. He owed them both nothing less.

And he was fine. He could spend an hour or two away from Kate and unable to see her for himself. Really. He could.

Okay, he wasn't fine. But he was managing.

Kate was going to be okay, was going to recover. And as long as that was true, he could face anything.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _A/N 2: As always, thank you, everyone, for reading and reviewing, especially the Guest reviewers whom I can't thank directly._


	39. Chapter 38: Aftermath 3

Author's Note: Continuing with more of the aftermath and diverging from "Rise" yet further.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 38_

Castle awoke suddenly, momentarily disoriented before he realized where he was. Lying on the cot, which he had persuaded the hospital staff to bring into Kate's room.

For a moment, he wasn't sure what had woken him up. Hospitals weren't the quietest of places even in the middle of the night, as he had learned. There were always ringing phones, nurses and doctors talking in low voices in the hallways, nurses popping in to check on patients throughout the night.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He could hear the steady sound of the heart monitor, hear Kate's steady breathing.

He closed his eyes and tried to fall back asleep when the sound of Kate's breathing hitched on something halfway between a whimper and a moan and he almost stumbled as he immediately catapulted off of the cot.

Kate. Oh god, Kate.

His heart clenched as he saw the frown on her face, the tears streaking down her cheeks.

"Kate," he said quietly, touching a gentle hand to her cheek. "Kate, wake up. It's all right. Kate."

She jerked awake with a gasp, her eyes flaring wide with panic, her breath coming fast, as the sound of her heart rate on the cardiac monitor increased. That couldn't be good for her newly-repaired artery, he thought with a spike of panic on his own part.

He gently cupped her face between his hands, bending so her eyes focused on him. "Kate, it's all right. You were dreaming. You're safe. Everything's all right," he crooned without any clear idea of what he was saying, any reassuring words that came to mind.

"Castle," she whimpered, "It hurts."

He inwardly flinched but tried not to show it and quickly helped her fingers find the button that regulated her pain medication. "I know, Kate. It'll be all right. Just breathe, slowly, in and out. It's okay, Kate. I'm right here."

Her fingers fumbled a little and then closed around his as she focused on him, trying to control her breathing.

Gradually, in a few minutes during which he forgot to breathe, the sound of the heart monitor slowed, returned to normal, as her breathing also slowed. The faint lines of pain around her lips eased as the pain medication started to kick in.

And it was only then that he allowed himself to relax a little, remembering to breathe.

"Better now?"

"I was dreaming," she answered quietly. "About… the hangar, the Captain." Another tear traced down her cheek and he wiped it away with a gentle thumb.

"I'm sorry," was all he could say, lamely. He wasn't entirely surprised that she had dreamed about Captain Montgomery's death. Her room was starting to look like a florist because over the course of the day, his mother's bouquet had been joined by others, one from the Mayor's office, another from the 12th precinct, one from Lt. Hassan, and most poignantly, one from Evelyn Montgomery.

"No, I'm sorry, Castle. You were right. If I'd listened to you, if I'd stopped sooner, maybe I could've—"

"Ssh." He cut her off by pressing a gentle finger against her lips. "This isn't your fault, Kate. You walked away, you stopped."

"Didn't do any good though."

A lump of emotion almost choked him. "No, Kate, ssh, it's okay. You didn't make this happen. If I'd been quicker, I could have—"

She blinked and frowned at him. "No, you couldn't have. It's not—this isn't your fault. You saved me, Castle, you did."

He choked on something like a sob. How could she say that? "I didn't. I failed you—"

He broke off as she squeezed his hand with surprising pressure. It took more strength than she really had to spare and he forgot his own guilt in worry. Stupid, he scolded himself. What was he doing, wallowing in guilt like this, being so self-indulgent when Kate had been shot?

"No, Rick. You did save me." She paused, visibly trying to find words, before she went on, her voice so quiet he almost needed to strain to hear them. "The last thing I remember is your face, your voice, and I knew… I had to come back, couldn't give up. I had to come back, to you."

She stopped but he didn't respond, could not respond through the lump in his throat.

She gifted him with one of her soft, tender smiles, one he didn't see often, one that for once showed all of Kate's heart in her eyes. "When it hurt so much, when I couldn't breathe and I wanted to give up, you pulled me back. So you see, you did save me, Rick."

"Oh God, Kate…" He had no words. There was nothing he could possibly say in response. He was awed and humbled and moved to the depths of his soul. He bent, lowering his head to rest against her pillow and shutting his eyes to hide the tears he couldn't quite help, as he tried to get a grip on his emotions. He hated that he was falling apart like this, making her comfort him like this, when she was the one lying in a hospital bed but for the moment, he couldn't help it. She didn't blame him. She said he'd saved her. He'd been so afraid, afraid that he had failed her as in some small corner of his heart he'd always dreaded that he would. Afraid that she wouldn't—couldn't—trust him anymore, when he had allowed her to be shot, he had opened up her mother's case again.

She shifted, moved her head just enough to press her cheek against his, and then brushed a light kiss on his ear. "It's okay, Castle. I'm going to be okay."

He finally lifted his head after a few minutes, abashed and embarrassed and a little ashamed. "Sorry," he croaked. "I shouldn't be making you comfort me. I should be the one comforting you."

"We'll take turns. Partners, remember?"

God, he didn't deserve her. "Partners," he echoed huskily.

She blinked at him and then her eyes abruptly flared wide with sudden worry, the sound of her heart rate picking up on the heart monitor. "Castle, the shooter, he's still out there. What are we going to do?"

"We're safe, Kate," he reassured her immediately. They had to be safe. The alternative was unthinkable. "I arranged for security for Alexis and mother and your dad and there's a guard outside the ICU at all times. We'll be safe, even if I have to hire the entire Secret Service to make it happen."

"I don't think people can just hire the Secret Service."

Definitely still his Beckett. "That's your concern, really, Beckett?"

The ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "Have to keep you on your toes somehow."

He smiled, the expression feeling somewhat foreign on his face (for the first time in his life) and then sobered as he bent again, cupping her cheek in his hand and meeting her eyes directly. "We'll be safe, Kate," he promised quietly. "I will do everything in my power to keep us safe, I promise."

She blinked, tears suddenly appearing in her eyes. "But the shooter… my mom's case. Am I supposed to just let him go, give up… for good?"

He inwardly flinched. "The boys will keep digging, you know they will. They won't give up. For now, just let them take care of it and you focus on getting better."

"I don't like it," she muttered fretfully.

No, she wouldn't. It simply wasn't in her to sit back while others investigated and did the work. "I know you don't, Kate, but you have to get better first. You're not in any condition to be looking into a case," he told her gently, "and you know it."

"I know but I still don't like it." It was very probably the closest she'd ever come to pouting.

He felt a rush of protective tenderness and pressed a gentle kiss to her temple. "You'll get better, Kate, and then we'll figure something out."

"Okay, Castle," she mumbled.

He passed a caressing hand down her hair but all he said was, "Your dad calls you Katie-bug?"

She gave a rather drowsy smile. "Not anymore, not really. Used to."

"It's cute but where'd the bug part come from?"

"It's because it sort of rhymes with ladybug. I had a favorite blanket when I was little, refused to fall asleep without it, and it had these big smiling ladybugs on it and that's when it started."

He smiled, a sudden mental image of a very young Katie, her chin sticking out in her trademark stubborn Beckett look as she refused to go to bed without her blanket. And oh, how he loved to hear these little stories about a young Katie.

She yawned a little, adorably. "He only calls me that when he's feeling really emotional… when he misses my mom the most."

No wonder Jim had used the old childhood moniker again. His heart hurt as it always did at the thought of Johanna Beckett and Jim's and Kate's lives without her.

"Oh." He bent and kissed her forehead again, seeing the way her blinks were growing slower. "Sleep now, Kate."

"Don't tell me what to do, Castle," she slurred, the very Beckett-like sentiment belied by the fact that her eyelids were fluttering as she tried, with limited success, to keep her eyes open.

"You can beat me up for it later, I promise," he quipped gently.

"Mm'kay," she mumbled. "You sleep too."

Even drugged up, she was telling him what to do. His bossy Beckett. "I will," he promised quietly.

He watched as her breathing slowed, becoming deep and even. Watched, treasuring every breath, every beat of her heart, for a few minutes before he returned to the cot and drifted into sleep himself.

* * *

Castle had been banished from Kate's room.

Well, okay, he hadn't been banished so much as voluntarily exiled himself, giving way to allow his mother and Alexis to visit with Kate while he hovered in the hallway, watching through the window. Alexis would return to school from tomorrow and he hoped that a nice long visit would help reassure her so she could do so without worrying too much.

At least, the nurse had finally agreed to adjust the bed so that Kate was reclining rather than lying down and could face forward without having to lift her head.

Baby steps of progress. She'd been allowed to graduate to eating real food today, albeit only liquids and soft foods like soup and jello. Caffeine and alcohol would, of course, be absolutely prohibited for at least the next month.

But she was staying awake for longer periods at a time, was more alert now than she had been.

From the looks of it, his mother was regaling Kate and Alexis with one of her seemingly inexhaustible repository of stories from her theatre days. Alexis was laughing, her face brighter than it had been in days, and Kate was smiling, something like her usual smile of tolerant affection and amusement over Hurricane Martha.

He drank in the sight of Alexis's laughing face, Kate's smile, let them soothe the lingering sores on his heart. His family was smiling again and that was all he needed.

Kate glanced up and met his eyes through the window, her smile changing, softening for a moment, and he returned her smile, his heart giving an almost painful throb. Her smile was, he thought not for the first time, the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

He was pulled from his (admittedly) sappy mooning over Kate when his phone went off and he pulled it out of his pocket, frowning a little as he saw that it was an unlisted number, before he hurried out of the ICU as he answered it. "Hello?"

"Mr. Castle?"

It was a man's voice, one he didn't recognize at all.

"Yes."

"I'm a friend of Roy Montgomery's. We need to talk about Detective Beckett."

Castle froze for a moment, forgetting entirely that he was standing in the middle of the hallway and neatly blocking the entrance to the ICU. His heart was abruptly racing. A friend of Roy's. Needing to talk. He didn't like the sound of this. Not at all.

He belatedly realized where he was and forced himself to keep walking, retreating to a quiet corner. A slew of questions were bubbling up in his mind but he finally just blurted out, "Who are you?"

"You can call me Mr. Smith. You don't need to know my name. All you need to know is that I'm a friend of Roy Montgomery's. I owed him my life and that's why I'm calling you now."

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" He couldn't imagine who or why someone would call pretending to have known Roy but Beckett's shooting and Captain Montgomery's death had been reported on in all the New York papers, as it would be, so it would hardly take a genius to connect the two and try to get something out of it. That this man knew Castle's phone number was something since for obvious reasons, Castle didn't advertise his cell phone number, but again, not necessarily impossible for someone to discover.

"I could tell you the dates of Roy's wedding anniversary and all his kids' birthdays—"

"Public records," Castle interrupted. Not really but at any rate, a fairly cursory background check into Roy would reveal such things.

"—but I doubt you'd accept it. Roy gave me your number and told me to call you and he told me to mention something about $100,000 and someone named Rathborne."

He felt a sudden chill spreading inside him at the name he'd never expected to hear again. More, at the mention of $100,000. The sum of money he had sent to Dick Coonan's offshore account in that failed attempt to get at Johanna Beckett's killer. The name of Rathborne had been used in front of the other cops involved in that operation with the fake Johnny Vong to draw Rathborne out. But the $100,000—that had not been publicized. To the best of Castle's knowledge, the only people who had known the exact sum of money Coonan had demanded and that Castle had given were himself, Beckett, Dick Coonan himself, Captain Montgomery, and the boys. The Captain had not mentioned the number to the DA nor that Castle had been the one to pay it; they had all been trying to keep as much secrecy as possible surrounding the operation.

Oh god. This was real. This was really happening. He had the vague thought that if this were anything else, involving any other situation, he would find this all exciting. Like something out of one of his books, the mysterious phone call from an anonymous person with a message from a dead man. Why had he ever thought that Derrick Storm's life was cool?

"I'm listening," he managed to say.

He couldn't quite bring himself to trust a voice over the phone but Roy must have trusted him. Had trusted him with this information, with Kate's safety. Roy had trusted this man, whoever he was. And Castle trusted Roy.

"The day before Roy died, he mailed a package to me. That package had information—information that Roy had kept that's damaging to a certain powerful person who would do anything to prevent this information from being made public."

The Dragon. Castle felt as if he were going numb. Roy had been blackmailing the Dragon? The person behind all this, who had killed Kate's mother.

"Roy was using this information as an insurance policy to protect his family, keep them—and Detective Beckett—safe."

Safe?! Castle surged to his feet in sudden fury. "Safe?" he choked out, his voice rising involuntarily. He became aware that he was attracting attention and he forcibly lowered his voice. "Are you kidding me?" he demanded in a hiss. "She was just shot! How is that keeping her safe?"

"Unfortunately, I didn't receive the package until yesterday." He didn't know who the hell this man was but his preternatural calm was infuriating. How could the man sound so coolly unaffected as he talked about this, as if his not getting the package were a trivial annoyance like a sudden rain shower?

"Mr. Castle, I am doing this on Roy's behalf because I owe it to him. I am telling you now that as long as Detective Beckett does not look into her mother's case, she will be safe, allowed to live her life. Those were the terms of the deal Roy Montgomery made and they are still in place. But if she starts to look into the case again—and this person is in a position to know—then he will once again send someone to finish what he started at Roy Montgomery's funeral."

Shit. Kate. Oh god.

"Why are you telling me this?" he choked.

"Roy left me another message for you. He said to tell you that he's sorry but he knows that you're the only person who can make Detective Beckett stand down."

The echo of what Roy himself had said to him—god, was it only a little more than a week ago?—gave him pause and broke through his initial fog of reaction. This was what Roy had meant when he said he was ending this. This was why Roy had felt that he could sacrifice himself, believing that his family and Kate would be protected. Roy had planned it all. The only thing he had not foreseen was that this mysterious Mr. Smith would not receive the package in a timely manner. If Mr. Smith had…

Castle's heart clenched. He knew it was pointless to dwell on what ifs but oh god…

"So I'm supposed to stop her…"

"That's the deal, Mr. Castle. Keep Detective Beckett from looking into her mother's case any further and she will be left alone. If you don't, if you fail and she continues…"

 _They would kill her._ The man left the words unspoken and Castle could not say them aloud but they hung in the air, echoed in his mind.

"Roy trusted you to keep Detective Beckett safe, Mr. Castle. Don't let him down."

With that, the man hung up and Castle was left staring at his phone as if he could somehow will the man to contact him again, as if he could extract the information the man had with just the power of his mind.

Shit shit shit. What was he going to do—no, scratch that. He knew what he was going to do, what he had to do. Keep Beckett from looking into her mother's case. Again. He had to keep her safe. He couldn't lose her.

He sighed heavily, shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment. He'd had this fight with Beckett already and it had been possibly the hardest thing he'd ever had to do—until these last couple days. He didn't relish the thought of having to tell Beckett that she couldn't look into her mother's case again, possibly not ever. He remembered Jim's words from the night he'd visited the loft, _convince her that her life is worth more than her mother's death._

She'd listened to him once, had already agreed to walk away once. He heard her voice again in his head. _My mom's case isn't the most important thing in my life. You are._

His heart pinched.

She had chosen him, chosen _them_ , over her mother's case once. He didn't doubt that she would do it again, not really. Kate was dedicated, she was committed, she was honorable. She kept her promises and when she'd made up her mind, she stuck to it. And she loved him.

He knew all that, knew it the way he knew the sun rose in the east. It was one of the immutable facts of the universe.

But it didn't mean he liked the idea of it. He could only imagine how much it would hurt Kate to give up on looking into her mother's case, to accept that she might never know who had killed her mother, would never get justice for her mother. It would be a deep, lasting wound on Kate's heart, the poison that prevented the gaping wound left by Johanna's death from healing cleanly.

He suddenly remembered what he'd said to Kate days after they'd met, his idiotic, arrogant display of showing off. _That tells me something happened, not to you. You're wounded but you're not that wounded. No, it was someone you cared about, someone you loved. And you probably could have lived with that but the person responsible was never caught…_ He remembered the sheen of tears in her eyes and his abrupt, searing sense of shame, something he hadn't felt in a long time really, cocooned in his life of hedonism and frivolity, surrounded by sycophants and supplicants, all people who wanted something from him and let him get away with being a jackass.

He knew that the deep gashes scored on Kate's heart as a result of her mother's death had never fully healed. It was what made her so vulnerable to falling back down the rabbit hole where her mother's case was concerned.

For her to have to give up completely—he inwardly flinched. It was going to _hurt_ Kate so badly. And even if he hoped—believed that he could make her happy—amazingly, miraculously, he could make her happy—he knew the pain would not completely go away.

And there was nothing he could do. He would only need to watch, knowing that she was hurting and he couldn't stop it.

It occurred to him that he would rather be flayed alive than have to do this. A thousand times easier to suffer pain himself than to know Kate was hurting and there was nothing he could do.

But that wasn't possible.

All he could do was be there for her, be a shoulder for her to cry on, hold her when she wanted to be held, and just _love_ her and hope and pray that his love would somehow heal her heart.

Slowly, suddenly feeling very tired and heart-sore, he stood up and made his way back to Kate's room.

He felt as if a long time had passed but no, it had only been a few minutes. His mother was still in full spate, gesturing dramatically. And as he watched, Kate laughed a little at something his mother said—not much and not for long. He could tell that it still hurt to laugh, although she was trying to hide it for Alexis's sake. But she was laughing, _smiling_ , her eyes bright.

And at that moment, he made up his mind. He couldn't tell Kate about this yet. He didn't want to upset her by making her think about giving up on her mother's case. Not now, not when she was still so weak. He would wait. He was procrastinating, chickening out. But he couldn't bring himself to inflict this hurt on her now, not when she should be focusing all her energies on recovering physically.

He hated the idea of hiding something about her mother's case from her but he _couldn't_ tell her now. He would wait until she was a little stronger, wait until she could, at the very least, sit up straight. Wait until she was discharged from the hospital in all likelihood.

Kate glanced up at him again and he promptly forced his lips to curve into the best semblance of a smile he could manage. Her eyebrows quirked into a faint frown and he knew he hadn't succeeded in fooling her completely—predictably. She knew him too well, read his expressions too well. She would probably call him out on it once his mother and Alexis left. He would come up with something, tell her he was worried about her, about getting the revisions for _Heat Rises_ done in time, both of which would be technically true. (Well, he didn't particularly care about the revisions for _Heat Rises_ but he knew he _should_ be worried about them.)

Words from a song suddenly ran through his head. _Kiss today goodbye. And point me toward tomorrow. We did what we had to do. Won't forget, can't regret, what I did for love.*_

What he did for love. What wouldn't he do for love? Watching Kate as she smiled at his mother and Alexis, he could only think, again, that there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for all of them, for his mother, for Alexis, for Kate. To keep Kate safe, make her happy, he would do anything.

 _~To be continued…~_

 _* "What I Did for Love" from the musical "A Chorus Line"._

 _A/N 2: For those who are wondering, this fic is winding to a close (finally); there are just a few more chapters to wrap things up._

 _As always, thank you all for reading and reviewing. The kind words are very much appreciated._


	40. Chapter 39: Aftermath 4

Author's Note: This will be the last of the chapters dealing with the more immediate aftermath of Beckett's shooting, by which I mean the timeframe dealt with at the beginning of "Rise."

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 39_

Kate was procrastinating.

She didn't like herself for it, knew she was being selfish, but she couldn't help it.

She had already decided what she needed to do. She just kept putting it off.

She needed him. She needed him too much. She knew that, especially now when she had nothing to give him, when she'd been reduced to this pitifully weak creature in a hospital bed who couldn't even sit up on her own, who was exhausted and almost in tears from the pain after tottering the few steps to use the bathroom, even with a nurse's help. _Everything_ hurt. There were times it seemed as if her very hair hurt. It hurt to sit up, hurt to lift her arms, hurt just to shift positions on the bed. Standing up was agony, let alone walking.

She'd told the nurse to reduce her morphine intake. She didn't dare become too dependent on it. She was still her father's daughter and she wasn't about to risk it. Not when just a week of it had her craving the blessed lack of pain it brought her. The nurse flatly refused to cut her off completely but had agreed to lower the dosage, start to wean her off it. And Kate agreed and didn't admit, even to herself, that the nurse might be right that the pain would be too much without any pain medication at all.

She hated this. She hated that she flinched at too-loud noises. Hated that she couldn't even look at herself anymore, couldn't look at the hole in her chest and the incision on her side whenever the nurses came in to change the dressings. Hated that she couldn't even get out of bed without a nurse to help her. Hated that she wasn't _herself_ anymore at all.

She hated the way Esposito and Ryan looked at her when they visited, hated the caution in Ryan's voice as if he thought she would shatter if anyone so much as looked at her roughly. Even Lanie annoyed her with her attempt at her usual brisk manner because Kate could tell that it was so obviously faked.

And then there was Castle.

Castle, who was still spending the entire day by her side. It had taken the combined persuasive efforts of herself, her dad, Martha, and Alexis to make Castle finally agree to at least leave the hospital at night and go back to the loft to sleep and even so, he had only agreed after she had been transferred out of the ICU and into the general wing of the hospital. He had spent a full week in the hospital with her in the ICU, dozing uneasily on a cot that was so short his feet hung off the edge.

He had essentially put his entire life on hold for her. He brought his laptop with him every morning but she knew he hadn't actually managed to get any real writing done in the last week and half. The hospital wasn't exactly conducive to concentration and besides that, he wasn't paying enough attention to write. Constantly hovering, ever ready to volunteer to get her a drink or some food, now that she was permitted to eat actual food again.

He'd spent the last few days reading aloud to her to distract her and keep her from getting too restless. She didn't feel like listening to any modern detective stories, nothing to remind her of all she wouldn't be able to do for months, didn't want a story involving guns. She wanted a distraction from the gritty realities of her life. So, instead, he'd read aloud to her from old-fashioned mysteries, an Agatha Christie where he'd made her laugh by making ridiculous faces and pretending to imitate Miss Marple and he'd introduced her to the books of another mystery author, Charles Finch, who wrote elegant Victorian mysteries similar in tone to Conan Doyle and with an aristocratic sleuth along the lines of Lord Peter Wimsey.

She was so selfishly glad he had stayed with her. But with every day that passed, she knew she couldn't keep asking him to do this. Her thoughts had been too fuzzy at first when Dr. Davidson had told her that she would need to be on bed rest for two weeks even after leaving the hospital to think about what that would mean for Castle but as the days passed and her thoughts cleared, she realized the ramifications. Bed rest! Needing to be waited on hand and foot—needing someone to help her sit up and stand and walk, needing someone to brush her hair and probably get dressed too, needing someone to cook for her and clean for her. She'd been reduced to a child again, worse than a child even, because she didn't kid herself that she would make a good patient. How could she ask Castle to do all that, take care of her so? She couldn't.

She knew he blamed himself for her injury—needlessly but Castle tended to take the blame for things. She knew him. Knew the selflessness of his love, the boundlessness of his generosity. She knew that he would never tell her it was too much, would never tell her she was a burden. He wouldn't—so she had to do it for him.

He had his own life to live. He had responsibilities—to Alexis, to his mother, to Black Pawn.

He couldn't keep doing this, setting aside his own life for her. Not now, not when she couldn't do anything for him.

For the last four days since she'd been transferred out of the ICU, she'd told herself she needed to tell him she'd be fine, that he didn't need to spend the entire day with her. But every day, she saw his face, felt the warmth of his smile, felt the way his very presence was a balm to her wounded body. Felt the way her damaged heart still warmed at the sight of him. And every day, when she imagined the bleakness of a day without him, her entire being seemed to rebel in panic and she found herself procrastinating. Every day, she found herself thinking, just one more day. She would let herself have one more day of his steadfast comfort. One more day, she told herself, until she no longer felt quite so much as if she would fall entirely to pieces without his smiles to brighten her day, his tenderness to soothe her broken body.

But then this morning, the doctor had spoken optimistically about her possibly being discharged as early as the afternoon of the day after tomorrow and she knew her time was running out. As it was always going to do.

She could do this. She had to do this.

She could go a couple weeks without seeing Castle. She had survived it before; she could do it again.

She didn't think about the nightmares she'd had the past few nights, the times she woke up crying and gasping for breath and wanting him to hold her and make her feel safe again the way only he could. The nightmares would go away. They had to, eventually.

She'd be fine. Her dad could take care of her. He'd already told her that he had asked for a leave of absence for a month or so from his work so he could take care of her, had asked if she thought Castle and Martha and Alexis would be okay with his staying at the loft to help out and she had told him that she'd been thinking of going out to his cabin instead. She wanted to get away from the city she had sworn to protect and now was terrified of going outside in, wanted to get away from the noise and the people.

She could do this. For Castle's sake.

Kate had made up her mind, was determined. She had to get better, become stronger, something closer to the detective he'd fallen in love with, not this pitiful broken shadow of an adult who couldn't even sit up without pain.

And then Castle walked in and she could swear he made the entire sterile hospital room appear brighter, warmer, just from his sheer presence, her chest filling with warmth and happiness at the sight of him. Castle. Her Castle.

She suddenly, ridiculously wanted to cry—and she hated that too, the way the pain medications made tears come so easily, wreaking havoc with her emotions.

"Good morning, Kate," he greeted her with a smile and his usual kiss on her forehead. He looked… happy, hopeful, this morning, his eyes bright and warm and oh, he was wearing one of his royal blue shirts that so perfectly echoed the color of his eyes and never failed to make her think how much she loved his eyes, the expressive, changeable azure blue of his eyes.

"Morning, Castle."

"Did you sleep okay?"

"Yes, fine," she answered as she always did. And this time, it wasn't entirely a lie. She'd had one nightmare, or the confused beginnings of one, only remembered darkness and the sound of shots, but then she'd been awoken by the night shift nurse coming in to check on her and somehow, fortunately, the nightmare hadn't returned and she'd slept the rest of the night dreamlessly.

He studied her as he set the backpack carrying his laptop and some books and some food down. She manufactured the best smile she was capable of mustering in order to allay his concerns—and then, irrationally, wanted to cry again at her apparent success.

"So I just talked to the doctor and he said that you might be able to be released the day after tomorrow. You'll be able to come home, Kate. I just got—"

Just like that, her time had run out. "Castle," she interrupted him as firmly as she could. "Castle, we need to talk."

He broke off, his expression becoming sober but still so full of tender concern she couldn't help but feel her chest warm. "What is it, Kate? Do you need something?"

 _I need you to leave._ She opened her mouth but the lie stuck in her throat. She couldn't say that, couldn't tell him that. She closed her mouth, swallowing back the lump of emotion, nervousness congealing in her stomach. "I—I want you to do something for me, Castle."

His lips quirked ever so slightly, as if to indicate she was being silly to doubt she ever needed to do more than ask. "Of course, anything, you know that."

God, she couldn't look at him while she did this. The unwavering love in his eyes made her want to do nothing so much as rest against his strong chest, feel the strength of his arms around her.

She looked down, her fingers idly picking at the hospital blanket. "I—I plan to go to my dad's cabin when I'm discharged, spend the next few weeks out there, and I… youdon'tneedtocomewithme," she finished in a rush.

There was a brief, terrible pause and she suddenly couldn't bear the silence, couldn't stand the emotions filling the room. And she found herself babbling, an uncharacteristic flood of words spilling from her. "It would only be for a few weeks, Castle, just until I'm on my feet again. We would still talk. I'll call you and… everything. My dad can take care of me, he's already offered. And—and then you wouldn't need to, you could focus on finishing _Heat Rises_ and—and taking care of Alexis since I know she's stressed over Ashley graduating and leaving for Stanford. It would just be for a few weeks and then I'd be back, Castle, I promise."

"No."

The refusal was flat, uncompromising, although he kept his voice surprisingly level.

She inwardly flinched but she hadn't been expecting him to agree easily. She knew him. She tried, with limited success, to steel herself but found her fingers plucking nervously at a loose thread on the hospital blanket, her mouth dry. "Castle, it would only be for a couple weeks, just to give me time to heal. I—I'm going to be on bed rest, you heard what the doctor said. You don't need to be there for that. My dad's cabin is quiet and it'd give me privacy to rest and get better. You don't need to worry. It's perfectly safe—"

"I don't need to worry?!" Castle abruptly exploded, cutting off her attempted reassurances and startling her into looking up at him. "You think my problem is where you plan to spend the next few weeks?! I don't care if you decide to convalesce in your dad's cabin or a suite at the Waldorf or an SRO in the Bronx but wherever you go, you aren't going anywhere without me! I am not spending weeks away from you, not now, Kate, you can't make me do it!"

"It would just be like when you went away last year for your book tour, Castle. Don't—"

"That was different and you know it, Kate! You're not talking about taking a vacation or even needing some space. You were just _shot_ , you almost died and—"

"I know what happened to me!" she snapped, her temper flaring. "That's exactly why I need to leave! I can't ask you to take care of me when I'm like this! It's not fair to you; you didn't sign up for being a nurse. You have your own life to live."

"You _are_ my life, Kate, don't you know that yet?" he asked, the sentiment belied by his scowl and the anger threaded through his tone. "And if you really think I could just let you go off alone to heal and go on blithely with my own life, you are out of your goddamned mind."

She flinched a little. Castle almost never swore, a remnant of his years of watching his language around Alexis, so the profanity was a sign of just how upset he was. She struggled to push herself into sitting up—reclining on a bed wasn't conducive to arguing—but fell back with a wince as pain stabbed through her. She blinked back tears of pain and frustration even as her resolve firmed. She was so pitiful, so helpless she couldn't even sit up; she couldn't possibly burden Castle like that. She wouldn't. A lump of emotion clogged her throat as she choked out, "I know you, Castle. I know how much you'd do for people you care about but I can't—I won't take advantage of you like that."

"I've _been_ taken advantage of in a relationship. I know what that looks like and believe me, that isn't you," he told her flatly, although there was no longer any anger in his tone. "You don't need to worry that you're asking too much of me. You're not; you wouldn't."

"I'm going to be on bed rest, Castle. You're going to need to help me do everything, wait on me hand and foot."

"I know what being on bed rest means. It doesn't matter. You're still not asking for too much. I _want_ to do it. Let me take care of you, Kate."

"Castle," she sighed. "I'm not going to be an easy patient to live with. I'm going to be difficult and bad-tempered and I don't want you to have to put up with that. You shouldn't have to put up with that. I'll snap at you and try to push you away and—and I'm afraid I'll break us."

"Do you really think I don't know all that already, Kate? I know it'll be hard. I expect I'll hover too much and drive you crazy and yes, we'll probably have a few blazing rows about it but I don't care. We'll get through all of it together and we'll be okay." He paused and then added, his voice softer, "Captain Montgomery said that the secret to his successful marriage to Evelyn was to keep showing up. I aim to do just that."

 _Marriage._ The word made her damaged heart flutter almost in spite of herself, even as the mention of Captain Montgomery, of poor Evelyn, had her heart clenching with pain, with grief. Evelyn, who would never see her husband again. How would Evelyn feel if Captain Montgomery had survived, if he was still alive but seriously wounded… If Captain Montgomery were the one lying on a hospital bed instead of buried in a coffin…

She choked on a sob at the thought, blinded by sudden tears. And then he was closing his fingers around hers and gently pulling her into his arms, careful not to jostle her. She tried—rather weakly—to resist but felt her feeble defenses crumble into dust at his touch.

Oh. Oh damn. She knew she should try to hold out but she knew by now when arguing with him was futile, recognized the implacable stubbornness in his tone, and she didn't _want_ to be away from him at all and she was so tired and it _hurt_ and she just couldn't fight him. She gave way with a shuddering sigh and shut her eyes as she buried her face against his shoulder and felt herself relaxing automatically into the familiar haven of his embrace. She didn't know how or why but it really did seem as if being held by him somehow made the pain ease. And she knew that she couldn't give this up. She didn't think she could do this without him and she was so selfishly glad and relieved that he refused to leave. "Don't let me go, Castle," she whispered against his shirt. "Please don't let me go."

She felt him smooth a gentle hand down her hair and press a kiss to her temple. "I won't, Kate," he promised. "I need you too much to let you go."

He needed her? She didn't know how he could say that but oh, she wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe he could need her as much as she needed him.

"We're going to be okay, Kate. We'll get through this. You said you believed in us."

She did believe in them. She loved him—there were times it felt as if her love for him was all that was keeping her from falling apart—but that also meant that she wanted what was best for him, wanted him to be happy. She didn't want him to have to take care of her in these next few weeks when she knew she would be irritable and short-tempered. She would try to spare him but she knew what kind of patient she was—the worst kind, stubborn and disobedient and impatient on top of that—and she couldn't help but fear that after a few weeks of dealing with her, he might lose patience with her. Might decide that he couldn't put up with her issues, her broken body, her life of darkness and death. He deserved so much better than her.

But she couldn't bear to be without him, not now.

She had to believe they could get through this. Aside from the weeks he'd been away on his book tour, they hadn't spent more than a day apart in the last year. Surely, surely, they could get through this.

"You've never had to deal with me when I'm sick before," she told him.

He drew back to drop a light kiss on the tip of her nose. "I've seen you deprived of coffee for the last week and half and I always thought you'd turn into something like the Hulk if you had to go without coffee for a day," he teased gently.

She pretended to scowl at him, trying to be more like her usual self. And it was… easy, somehow, or at least easier than she was expecting, to fall into something like their customary teasing. It was… natural. It might have been the most basic truth of their relationship, that they enjoyed each other's company. And that was still true. Would always be true, she thought. "You thought I'd turn into some green monster?"

"Don't insult the Hulk, Beckett, he's one of the Avengers and a hero," he chided with mock reproach.

She laughed softly and tried not to wince at the dull stab of pain that ricocheted through her. Damn it.

His eyes softened and she knew he'd noticed. "Sorry. I'll stop making you laugh."

She shook her head. "Don't apologize, Castle. I love that you make me laugh, you know that."

His lips curved upwards slightly. "Okay, then, I'm not sorry."

She managed a smile. "That's better." She paused. "Blazing rows? How very British of you."

He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Comes from reading too many books set in England. I even taught myself some Cockney rhyming slang years ago."

Of course he had. Typical Castle. "That, I can believe. Let me guess, you taught yourself some Klingon too."

"And some Elvish," he confirmed.

She smirked at him. "You really are such a geek, Castle."

"Takes one to know one, Beckett. I'm not the one who cos-played as Lieutenant Chloe."

"Never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"Nope. Besides, I love that you're just as much a geek as I am."

She smiled. Yeah, she kind of loved that too.

He shifted on the hospital bed, trying to find a more comfortable position than his current perch on the edge before he gave up in futility, settling for putting his arm around her.

"Oh, you distracted me earlier but I have something for you."

"Castle, you don't need to be buying me gifts."

"Wait until you see it before protesting." With his free hand, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, clear plastic bag containing the necklace with her mother's ring on it.

Oh. Kate's throat felt suddenly tight with emotion. "Castle, we talked about this. You keep my mom's ring safely since I can't wear it right now." She had to force herself to choke out the words. She supposed it was irrational of her but she thought the fact that she couldn't wear her mother's ring because it might get caught on the bandages on her chest and generally get in the way when the nurses were changing the bandages was one of those things that bothered her the most.

"Oh ye of little faith, Beckett," he said with mock reproach. "Do you think I'm that forgetful?" So saying, he pulled out the chain with her mom's ring around it and proceeded to unfasten the clasp before fastening it again around her neck. "There. Perfect fit."

He had gotten her a new chain for her mom's ring so the ring fell to a little below her collar bone and well above the bandages on her chest. She reached up to finger her mom's ring and felt tears prick her eyes.

She turned her face into his shoulder. "Oh, Castle," she almost wailed. "You… thank you." She didn't know how he did it, how he seemed to know what she needed even without her saying. How did he know how fiercely she missed her mom these days, how desperately she wished she could hear her mom's voice telling her it would all be okay, reassuring her as only her mother had been able to do? Ridiculously, even with all the actual physical pain she was in, the fact that she couldn't keep her mom's ring close to her heart the way she usually did had hurt her too.

And somehow Castle had known or guessed what it would mean to her to be able to keep her mom's ring with her and made it possible. This was what he did for her, what he'd always done for her really. He'd fixed her dad's watch after her old apartment had exploded, had given her the keepsake box to keep her dad's watch and her mom's ring in, had given her the DVD box set of _Temptation Lane_ so she could recapture the feeling of comfort and safety that it gave her.

Her hand crept up to clutch his shirt over where she could feel his heart beating, which was as much as she could lift her arms without pain, as she nestled her face against his collar. How could she possibly have thought she could leave him, heal without him? She couldn't. She knew that now. He was her safe haven, her comfort. He gave her strength when she was weak.

She settled more snugly against him, felt him wrap his arms around her. She shut her eyes and breathed in his familiar scent.

Scent was such a powerful prod to a person's memories and emotions. After her mom had died, she had treasured her mom's perfume, had wrapped one of her mom's sweaters around her for the comfort of having her mom's scent that had permeated the sweater surrounding her.

Oh, she missed her mom. But now, surrounded by the warmth and strength of Castle's embrace, somehow, she felt the old, familiar ache of missing her mom ease just a little. That feeling of being at home, completely and utterly safe, that nothing too bad could happen because her mom was around—she had lost it when her mom had died but now, with Castle, she felt that sense of security again. Not that nothing bad wouldn't happen at all—their very location in a hospital put paid to that belief—but that no matter what happened, she wouldn't be alone and she could get through it.

"Do you really want to go out to your dad's cabin?" he asked quietly after a few minutes.

"I was thinking of it. I want to get out of the city. The cabin's quiet, peaceful. Dad's already said you'd be welcome to come and there's even room for Alexis if she wants to join us."

"Mm. I was rather thinking about taking you out to the Hamptons for the summer, Kate. What do you think? It's private and there's a good hospital nearby for your physical therapy and you know there's plenty of room for your dad or Lanie or anyone. And I figured that the place is big enough that you should be able to have some space to yourself if you need to get away from my hovering."

Oh, the Hamptons. She hadn't thought of the Hamptons house (mansion) somehow. "But Castle, I can't manage stairs and your bedroom's on the second floor."

"There's a guest bedroom on the ground floor, remember? I thought we could use that until you can make it up the stairs."

He had thought this through. She wondered why she was surprised since she really shouldn't be. By now, she knew that when he chose to be, Castle could be perfectly responsible and when it came to taking care of the people he loved, he never stinted.

And to go back to the Hamptons house… She remembered the week she and Castle had spent there last summer—it had been a perfect idyll of long hours spent in the sun and equally long, delicious hours making love. Thinking about it now, she was sure it had been the happiest week of her life, luxuriating in sunshine and laughter and love. She felt a throb of longing for that halcyon time and she turned her head to smile at him. "Yes, Castle, let's go to the Hamptons."

He smiled. "Great. Your dad can come too and he's more than welcome to stay the entire summer if he wants to."

Not for the first time, she thought that she loved how well Castle and her dad got along. "Thanks, Castle. And can we go to Margaretta's to get pastries?"

"I'll drive to Margaretta's every day if you want me to."

He meant it. He would think nothing of driving for more than an hour every morning just to bring her back Margaretta's pastries if she asked him to. Generous, loving man that he was. "I think once every couple weeks or so should be enough." She swore, again, that she wouldn't take advantage of him, that she would do everything she could to make him happy.

"Whatever you want, Kate."

She felt the words seep into her, fill her, as if they could somehow heal the hole in her chest, and turned her face up to press a kiss to his chin. "All I want is you, Rick." It was an uncharacteristic thing to say but she knew how much words meant to him, knew how much he loved it when she gave him words.

And she was more than rewarded by the smile he gave her, the way his eyes lit up as if they'd been illuminated from within. She could still do that for him, could make him happy.

And maybe, after all, that was enough.

She needed him, could not let him go, could not face the idea of having to get through these weeks of pain without him.

But she could still make him happy, couldn't she? She could—she would—she _did_ —love him enough to make up for her neediness and she would make him happy. And hopefully that would be enough.

 _~To be continued…~_

* * *

A/N 2: There's going to be a time jump for the next chapter. I'm not planning on going into detail about the actual process of Beckett's physical (or mental/emotional) recovery from her shooting, that has already been written about by better writers than I. For example, I'll refer you to the brilliant "Resurgence" by Garrae, "No More Hiding" by The Keddster, "silence is star-like" by closingdoors, and "Overlap" by honeyandvodka.

Thanks, as always, to all readers and those who take the time to review. It is all much appreciated.


	41. Chapter 40

Author's Note: Fair warning, this chapter is probably edging into strong T-rated territory. I am assuming you don't mind…

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 40_

It was time.

Kate had made up her mind. She had even gone so far as to ask the doctor after her last physical therapy session yesterday.

She was impatient. The best sign (well, sort of) of the improvement in her physical condition was that she'd started to notice Castle again. One of the most depressing things—irrationally—about the first week of her recovery after being discharged from the hospital was that Castle had stripped down to his boxers to help her wash her hair and she'd been in too much pain to care. She would never, ever have thought that the day would come when the sight of Castle's near-naked body would not affect her but apparently a near-fatal shooting had achieved that. But in these last few weeks, now that there were times when she could almost forget about her physical limitations completely, she noticed him again. The first time her mouth had gone dry when she'd seen him wearing a t-shirt that was tight across his shoulders and chest had surprised her and thrilled her—and then depressed her.

Because along with her own returning desire had come creeping, insidious fears that Castle might no longer desire her.

It had been more than two months now. Castle had taken care of her, as he had promised, the entire time. Her dad had accompanied them to the Hamptons and stayed for the first month, doing his part to keep her company and take care of her when she was so helpless. But then her dad had needed to return to work and while he called almost every day, he only returned to see her every other weekend, making a 4-day weekend out of each visit to avoid the usual Friday evening traffic going out to the Hamptons.

Alexis and Martha had also spent most of the summer in the Hamptons once Alexis's school had let out for the summer. They had only returned to the city last weekend so Alexis could spend some time with Ashley before he left for Stanford next week.

The presence of her dad, Alexis, and Martha had provided a buffer of sorts between her and Castle, other people to distract Castle from hovering over her and to provide company for her when Castle was writing and then finishing the edits on the Nikki Heat book. But even so, she and Castle had had a few arguments. The worst one had taken place about a month ago, after her dad had left, when she had pushed herself too hard in her exercise out of sheer frustration at the slow pace of her recovery, in defiance of Castle's concerns and warnings. She'd been amply punished for her own stubbornness when she'd been reduced to a trembling, tearful, aching wreck, in more pain than she had suffered for a month and again unable to shuffle more than a few steps without agony the next day. And Castle had taken that opportunity to say 'I told you so' and she had flared up at him, all the more heatedly because she'd known perfectly well that she'd been in the wrong and had been stupid and reckless to push herself so hard. Castle had snapped back at her before storming out of the house and it had been a few hours before they'd both given in and apologized.

But as Castle had predicted, they had moved past the arguments and for the most part, Castle had been the soul of patience with her, making her ashamed of her own irritability. He had soothed her after nightmares and panic attacks and she couldn't imagine how she would have survived the summer without him except to know that it would have been so much harder, so much bleaker. He had simply cared for her as no one else could have or would have, had been unfailingly careful with her.

Really, he had, Kate thought, treated her largely as he might have treated Alexis if Alexis were ever seriously injured—heaven forbid.

He was so tender with her—but that was almost the problem. There had been none of his usual innuendoes, no ogling looks, no intimate touches. His kisses were all brief and relatively chaste and he usually limited himself to kissing her cheek or her forehead as it was. Even when he'd had to help her change the bandages over her wounds, his hands had been careful and cautious and as impersonal as if he were a nurse.

They'd been sharing the guest room downstairs but he had insisted on placing a large pillow down the middle of the bed, acting as a barrier between them during the night, explaining that he didn't want to accidentally hurt her in his sleep with his movements. Which was a valid concern, she had to admit, as a year of sharing a bed with Castle had taught her that he tended to be an active sleeper. He had woken her up in the night more times than she could count by flinging his arm over her, sometimes even kicked her a little with one leg as he turned over in his sleep.

But the validity of his concerns didn't quite manage to eradicate the little niggle of worry, that maybe he simply didn't want her anymore. She'd started to resent that stupid, blasted pillow as if it were to blame for Castle's physical reticence.

He had seen her at her worst. He had seen the angry, red hole in her chest, had seen the jagged line up her side, the black stitches from where the doctors had sewn her up again after fixing her. The look of it had made her shudder in the hospital, reminded her of nothing so much as Frankenstein's monster, and she'd avoided looking at it since. If she could have prevented Castle from seeing it, she would have but she couldn't bandage up her own side so she'd had no choice.

She'd never thought she was vain before but now, the extent to which she was bothered by the thought of her scars was making her think she really had been vain about her looks and her body, without even realizing it. She hadn't felt so insecure about her body since she'd been a spotty, gangly teenager. And now she couldn't seem to help it.

She felt a small shudder go through her. God, why would he want her anymore? She couldn't even stand to look at herself anymore, felt ugly, the furthest thing from sexy, whenever she thought about her scars.

She'd carefully avoided looking at herself whenever the bandages were changed and when she showered. The memory of the wounds when she'd seen them in the hospital were vivid in her mind and she couldn't stand to look at them again. Stark reminders that she had died and been brought back to life. Like some zombie.

And she couldn't seem to forget about them, her insecurities, her inadequacy, whispering at her, nagging at her insidiously. Castle could be with any woman he wanted, was used to being with beautiful, physically flawless women. Meredith and Gina, whatever else they might be, were undoubtedly beautiful women. She remembered what he'd blurted out in the hotel in LA— _the last time I was here, I brought this Parisian supermodel._ She couldn't help but remember all the woman she knew had found him attractive in the last couple years: Eligible Bachelorette Number 3, Ellie Monroe, Natalie Rhodes… None of them, she was sure, had any physical flaws to detract from their voluptuous, perfect bodies.

She knew he loved her. He did. He still loved her; she could hear it in his voice, see it in his eyes. And that should have been enough but she found it wasn't, not quite. What would she do if he loved her but no longer lusted for her?

She tried to tell herself she was being silly. She didn't think he was that shallow or that he only loved her for her looks. She _knew_ he wasn't that shallow.

But she still wondered. He had seen her scars and why would he find her attractive when she couldn't even stand to look at herself?

And he hadn't tried to touch her intimately, hadn't indicated by so much as a look or a word that he wanted to resume their sexual relationship.

She could almost laugh at herself if she weren't so close to tears. God, what a ridiculous reversal, that she could be so worried that Richard Castle, the known womanizing playboy, might no longer want to sleep with her when she'd spent the first weeks after meeting him vowing that she wouldn't fall into his bed to be another notch on his bedpost.

She set her jaw. She'd made up her mind, formulated a plan. Or something.

And it started by taking a good look at herself, scars and all. She wasn't going to act like some Victorian prude and try to have sex while still wearing a nightgown or something like that.

Kate deliberately stripped off her clothes so she could look at herself, a long unflinching look. Her eyes went first, immediately, to the bullet hole between her breasts that had been angry and red with unsightly bruising around it the last time she'd looked at it. Now… It was still obvious, a circle of scar tissue, but neither angry nor red, had faded to a pinkish-brown. She ran a careful finger over it, flinching at the touch as she had a sudden flash of memory of the burning pain when the bullet had entered. She forcibly regulated her breathing, pushing the memory aside, focusing only on the sensation. It was a hard, puckered knot of scar tissue, didn't feel like skin at all. Ugh.

Then to her side. She was expecting the same ugly, jagged stitches, a string of black crosses all the way up her side, surrounded by mottled bluish-green bruising and maybe even oozing a little as it had been in the hospital. It wasn't. Oh. The surgical sutures had been removed about a month ago on her check-up at the hospital. Of course she had known that intellectually; the nurse had told her the stitches were being removed. She remembered feeling the tug of some pain as it had happened. But somehow, she hadn't fully realized what it meant, that the black thread of the sutures that had been so gruesome would be gone. The incision on her side had faded somewhat to a dark pink line but it was still highly visible against her pale skin.

She assessed herself in the mirror with as much detachment as she could muster but she couldn't seem to look away from the hole in her chest, the scar along her side. She'd been cut open, had died on the operating table before being shocked back to life. Like Frankenstein's monster.

How could Castle want her when she couldn't see past her own scars either?

She didn't know but she'd made up her mind to find out. She swallowed back the lump of nervousness, tamping down the flare of panic and burgeoning embarrassment. She was a grown woman and it wasn't as if Castle had never seen her naked before.

"Castle?"

As she'd expected, he appeared immediately. "Beckett, you need some—" his words ended on a strangled sound as his eyes almost bugged out of his head and then he was slamming his eyes shut and averting his head for good measure. "You need something?" he croaked.

Oh. Hurt slammed into her, tears abruptly filling her eyes. Well, now she knew. He couldn't even stand to look at her naked body. He didn't want her anymore.

Miserably, she bent and grabbed her shirt, shrugging into it until she was at least partially covered again, the damning disfiguring scars concealed. "No, that's okay," she choked, wondering desperately how she was going to escape the bathroom without crying. "You don't want me. I thought… never mind. I'll just go—"

Her words were cut off by his lips as he kissed her hard and thoroughly, his tongue hot and wet and aggressive and oh, oh god, oh yes, Castle was kissing her again the way he hadn't in months. Kissing her so thoroughly he stole her breath and her thoughts and all she could do was surge up into him, flinging her arms around his neck, as she kissed him back. Castle. Her Castle. Oh yes, this was what she'd been missing.

He wrapped his arms around her, hauling her against him, as his lips and tongue laid waste to hers, his tongue curling around hers in a way that had her sagging against him for support. She moaned a little deep in her throat and arched her hips against him and he abruptly broke off the kiss, releasing her.

"Shit. Kate, no, wait. We can't—we can't do this," he gasped.

Oh no, he wasn't. She tightened her arms around him, tugging him closer to her. "Why not?" she breathed against his skin, leaving a trail of soft, damp kisses along his neck.

He groaned and tried with limited success to avoid her seeking lips. "Because," he panted, "you… oh god, Kate… you're healing and I… I don't want to hurt you."

She paused in her seduction. "It's fine. You won't hurt me." Wait. His words broke through her fog of desire. "Is that why you didn't want to look at me? You do still want me?" She inwardly writhed a little at how insecure she sounded but she couldn't help it. It had hurt so badly to think he might not and she couldn't seem to shrug off her own doubts, her self-consciousness about her scars.

He choked on air and stared at her. "You honestly think I don't want you anymore? Are you out of your mind?"

She bridled a little. "You've barely kissed me in months and you haven't touched me and haven't said anything and I—"

"You almost died, Kate; you haven't been in any condition to—I've been taking cold showers for the last two months!"

A little gurgle of amusement escaped her at his beleaguered expression. He looked rather like a petulant little boy… except his hair was a mess from her fingers and even as she thought it, he moved his hips and she felt the part of him against her, reminding her that he was most definitely not a little boy—and he was most definitely still attracted to her. Molten heat erupted inside her, pooled low in her belly, and she deliberately arched into him making him groan. "Take me to bed, Castle," she husked against his ear.

"Bossy Beckett."

And then it was her turn to gasp as he slid his hands to cup her butt and she found herself being bodily lifted.

Yes. God, yes. His touch wasn't so tender now, his hands firm and strong, as he carried her the few steps into the bedroom. She wrapped her arms and her legs around him, ignoring the faint twinge of tightness from the healing incision on her side, and proceeded to scatter kisses along the line of his jaw, his cheek, nipping teasingly at his earlobe.

His tenderness returned as he carefully lay her down on the bed and paused to kiss her more softly but still with simmering passion. She shrugged out of her shirt and watched unabashedly as he stripped out of his clothes, openly ogling every inch of his broad shoulders, his chest, the muscles of his pectorals.

He smirked at her, pausing to deliberately flex his muscles. "See something you like?"

She shot him a heated look beneath her lashes. "Get in here and I'll show you."

He huffed a breathless laugh but then all amusement faded, the atmosphere shifting, when he was finally naked and joining her on the bed.

He cupped her cheek in his hand. "Kate…" Just her name but the tone, the look in his eyes, emotion warring with desire, made it eloquent.

She slid her hand behind his neck and brought his lips to hers, kissing him slowly and thoroughly. She let her eyes close, her mind going blissfully blank, at his kiss, the caress of his hands, the weight of his body over hers. _Yes, oh yes, this was what she wanted…_

His hands were sure, confident, as they touched, explored, learned her body all over again and then his lips were following the path his hands had already taken. He paused for a moment before pressing his lips to the scar tissue between her breasts and she tried but couldn't quite hold back her slight flinch, the sudden hitch in her breath. He froze, looking stricken. "Did I hurt you?"

She shook her head quickly. "No. I just... I don't like the scars," she admitted very quietly, ashamedly.

His expression softened as he moved one hand to flatten it ever so gently against the surgical scar on her side and then bent and kissed the mark between her breasts again with so much tenderness that she felt ridiculous tears pricking at the back of her eyes. "Oh, Kate," he breathed, "your scars are beautiful."

"They're scars; they can't be."

"Do you know what I see when I look at them?"

"Scar tissue." The lingering signs that she'd died and been brought back to life, evidence of trauma, the way she was damaged, broken.

He shook his head slowly. "What I see, Kate, is evidence of how you fought to come back to me. They're signs of your strength written on your skin and they're beautiful, Kate, don't ever doubt that."

He meant it. He really meant it. She could see the utter sincerity in his eyes, the love. Only Castle could make scars sound like poetry. And at that moment, with him looking down at her, his eyes midnight blue and burning with passion, she believed him. She felt beautiful again, scars and all. She couldn't speak through the lump of emotion in her throat but she drew him in to kiss him with all that she felt for him.

The kiss spun out, the rest of the world falling away, and then it was just a blur of skin against skin, of his hands and his lips and his tongue caressing, worshipping every inch of her body, eradicating with every kiss and every caress any doubts that he still wanted her.

And when he finally slid inside her, the sound of their strangled groans mingled in the air.

"I missed this."

"I missed _you_."

And then there were no more words, no more need for words, as he began to move and she met his every motion, their bodies easily falling again into the universal, timeless dance of love and lust that was somehow unique to them.

And then they were falling over the edge together, finding the cataclysm of physical bliss that belonged only to each other.

Afterwards, he slumped onto his back, bringing her with him so she was lying half-draped on top of him and she pillowed her head on his shoulder, hearing the pounding of his heart in his chest.

Her eyes drifted closed as she half-dozed, luxuriated in the heat and strength of him beneath her, the loose-limbed relaxedness of her body.

Her Castle. Just as she was his.

"I missed that," he breathed after a long few minutes.

"Mm," she hummed her agreement against his shoulder.

"Kate?"

"Hmm?"

"You're really okay, right? Not in pain or… or anything?"

She lifted her head just enough to smile at him. "I'm fine." Better than fine, her body still lax and liquid with pleasure.

He returned her smile and cupped her cheek with his hand, lightly caressing the soft shell of her ear.

"Castle?" It was her turn to break the silence.

"Hmm?"

"No more pillow between us."

He huffed a soft laugh and lifted his head to kiss her hair. "No more pillow," he promised. "I hate that thing."

She smiled as he echoed her own sentiments. "Good."

"Nothing is ever coming between us, Kate," he vowed with sudden solemnity.

She propped her chin on his chest as she met his eyes. "Not even the new Captain?" she asked, mentioning something that had been bothering her for the last couple days since she'd spoken with the boys. Castle had, predictably, shrugged it off with a smirk, claiming, "I'm charming. Everyone likes me so I'm sure this Captain Gates will too." Kate wasn't quite so certain. From what the boys had said, this Iron Gates didn't sound like the sort of woman who would be swayed by charm; no woman who'd survived working as a cop and risen through the ranks to become a precinct captain would be.

Kate had finally scheduled her official return date with the NYPD, set for three weeks from now, learned that she would need to undergo a mandatory psych eval and requalify at the shooting range. She hated the idea of returning to work without him. "You know the boys say she's a real stickler for the rules and she's already made comments about not liking civilian interference with police work."

"Nothing and no one," he repeated. "I've still got the Mayor on speed dial and if need be, I'll call up Agent Shaw and Agent Fallon to give testimonials about my helpfulness with your cases. You're not getting rid of me just by going back to work, Beckett."

The mention of the Mayor reassured her; she tended to forget the political strings Castle could pull because he didn't do that sort of thing anymore, knowing she generally didn't like it. But in this case, it was a relief.

She pretended to sigh. "Can't blame a girl for trying."

He gave a mock growl and rolled over, making her laugh as she fell back onto the mattress only to have her laughter cut off on a gasp as he neatly trapped her beneath his body. "Oh, can't I? You're mine and I'm not letting you go."

She smiled, her heart fluttering inside her, her insides melting at this display of possessiveness. He wasn't being so careful with her anymore. "Promise?"

His eyes softened, his lips curving upwards in that tender smile he reserved for her. "I promise, Kate," he breathed just before he kissed her.

She let her eyes close and her last coherent thought before she gave herself up to the mind-clearing pleasure of his kiss was that finally, she felt fully healed, whole again.

 _~To be continued…~_

Author's Note: This is the penultimate chapter, except for an epilogue. Finally, as this fic has gotten to be so much longer than I ever imagined it would be.

As always, thank you to everyone for reading and reviewing, especially the guest reviewers whom I can't thank directly.


	42. Chapter 41

Author's Note: This last chapter is a very short one, for which I hope you will forgive me considering what happens in it.

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Chapter 41_

It was a beautiful day.

Kate closed her eyes, turning her face up to the sun, as she lazily reclined on a lawn chair.

The last few days had been idyllic and since they were alone this week in the Hamptons before her dad, Martha, and Alexis returned next weekend, she and Castle had been more than making up for lost time, spending long hours making love in their bed. She was finally able to walk up the stairs without pain and without it utterly exhausting her so she and Castle were once more ensconced in the luxury of the master bedroom and making good use of it. She smiled a little dreamily and a little smugly too. If she'd had any lingering doubts about how much Castle still wanted her, they had been thoroughly demolished now.

She'd had another physical therapy appointment that morning and while the appointments thankfully no longer left her in pain or quite so utterly spent afterwards, they still tired her out, made her inclined to spend the rest of the day being lazy.

"Falling asleep on me, Beckett?"

"Hmm, no, just sunning myself," she murmured, not opening her eyes.

"You're getting tan."

"It's summertime."

"And the living is easy?"

She snorted a little. "Clever, Castle."

"I pride myself on it."

She huffed a soft laugh and felt him lean over to press a kiss to her cheek.

A comfortable silence settled over them, broken only by the quiet sound of Castle turning the pages of the book he was reading. And Kate thought that she hadn't felt so utterly relaxed, so happy, since last summer and the week she and Castle had spent out here then.

She wasn't sure how much time passed—and really, it wasn't like it mattered since neither she nor Castle had anywhere to go—before she heard Castle put his book down. "Say, Beckett, I'm going inside to get a drink. D'you want anything?"

"No, I'm good."

"'kay." He bent and pressed a kiss to her hair and then she heard his retreating footsteps.

It was a few minutes before she heard him return and a soft clink of a glass being put down.

"Hey, Beckett, open your eyes."

She did, blinking at first in the sudden brightness of the sun, and then gasped a little, her heart abruptly fluttering wildly in her chest like a trapped bird. Oh. Oh god. Oh Castle.

He was down on one knee in the grass and in his hand was a diamond ring.

Oh oh oh. After all this time, after they'd promised always and he'd promised to ask her properly, the moment was here. The moment was now. She suddenly found it hard to breathe.

This was the moment. The one their lives had been working towards since the day she'd pulled him out of his book party for questioning, the day she'd seen the spark of intrigue, of lust, light up his eyes when he saw her. The moment her life had changed forever, had become extraordinary.

He met her eyes, looking solemn and hopeful and so beautiful, his eyes reflecting all the love she'd ever dreamed of.

"Beckett. Kate… Katherine Beckett."

She bit back a bubble of watery laughter. "You going to ask me a question or are you just making sure you know my name?"

He blew out a breath and narrowed his eyes at her a little. "You're laughing at me, now?"

Oh. Her heart was suddenly a soft, melting thing inside her chest. Was he—he was nervous, wasn't he? Tenderness swamped her chest and she pressed a hand to her chest, right over her fluttering heart as if it would help contain the emotions swelling inside her. "Ask me."

The corners of his lips curved upwards into a faint smile, the smile that existed mostly in his eyes and never failed to make her heart skip a beat.

"The moment we met, I thought you were extraordinary and every day that I've spent with you since then has proven that I really had no idea. You're my best friend, my partner, and knowing you has made me a better man."

Oh. Oh damn. He really was going to make her cry.

"I love you more today than I did yesterday or the day before that. I can only imagine that 40 or 50 years from now, I will love you in a way that I can't even comprehend right now. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Katherine Beckett, will you marry me?"

She blinked and had to swallow hard before she could speak. "Yes. Of course, yes, Richard Castle, I will marry you."

His answering smile could have lit up the entire world, made her feel as if the sun had focused all its warmth on her.

She had no idea which of them moved first, not that it mattered, but he was surging up off his knee and she was catapulting towards him and then his lips were on hers, his arms going around her, as he kissed her as if the world had suddenly become a vacuum and she the only available source of oxygen.

She could have kissed him forever but soon enough, they broke apart just enough to breathe and to smile into each other's eyes as he gently tugged her so she was standing up with him and then slid the ring onto her finger. Where it belonged.

She rested her newly-adorned hand on his chest, seeing the way the diamond caught the sunlight.

It was _big_. She didn't know why she was surprised at that. Castle was a multimillionaire, after all, and he loved being generous to the people he cared about, loved grand gestures. Ridiculous, extravagant man that he was. _Her_ extravagant man.

She suddenly thought about her mother's ring, her constant companion for more than ten years, and somehow, she knew that somewhere, her mom was smiling and happy for her.

"Do you like it? Because if not, we can change it," Castle—her _fiancé_ —said.

She shook her head, joy bubbling up inside her and escaping in a little giggle. "It's perfect. I love it. I love you."

It was his turn to laugh as if there was no way to contain his overflowing happiness and then he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her clean off the ground for a moment. She flung her arms around his neck with a little squeal of laughter and held on, ignoring the twinge of pulling on her incision. "Castle!"

He set her back down, beaming at her and oh, her heart danced around in her chest because she had never, ever seen him look so happy. He looked positively uplifted. It was a good look on him.

"I need to call my dad," she told him.

"And I need to call Alexis," he returned.

But neither of them moved, only stayed there, grinning at each other like a pair of loons.

"We're really doing this," Castle blurted out, as if he couldn't quite believe it. "We're really getting married."

"We really are," she laughed, again. They were going to get _married_! "I said yes and I warn you, Mr. Castle, I keep my promises so you're stuck with me forever."

"I can't imagine anything I want more."

She leaned in to kiss him again but before too long, the touch of their lips crumbled apart around their irrepressible smiles and so she only rested her forehead against his, their breaths mingling.

Married. They were going to be married.

She had a sudden flash of memory, of lying on the grass, bleeding out and thinking that would be the end, and then his frantic, terrified expression, his pleading eyes, his voice begging her not to leave him, telling her that they needed to get married. That was why she'd come back. His words, his love, the future she so desperately wanted to have with him had tethered her to life, had given her a reason to hold on while she'd been floating in the black.

She kissed him again, softly. "Rick," she breathed. Just his first name—she couldn't think of any other words—but her tone made just his name sound like an endearment. And after all, in many ways, his first name was an endearment since she really only used it in tender moments.

His smile and his eyes softened, as they always did when she called him by his first name. "Do you want to call your dad?" he asked quietly after another long minute.

"I should. And you need to call Alexis and Martha."

"I do," he agreed.

But it was another minute before either moved and then Kate, rather reluctantly, released him and stepped out of the circle of his arms, although her fingers caught and held his. She couldn't quite bear to lose contact with him now.

She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and called her dad as he did the same. She tried her dad's private office line but there was no answer so she tried his cell phone.

"Hi, pumpkin. Kate and I are engaged," Castle blurted out immediately and then he pulled a comical face and made a show of holding his phone away from his ear as he listened to Alexis's reaction.

"Katie, what is it?" her dad answered, sounding anxious. And she suddenly realized that of course he would be, since she almost never called him in the middle of the workday unless something was wrong. Not helped by the fact that she knew her dad still worried about her recovery, was still haunted by her shooting. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Dad," she hurriedly reassured him. "I'm great," she amended, not quite able to hold back a silly, giddy grin. "I just wanted to tell you that Castle and I are engaged."

There was a brief pause and then her dad responded, his voice a little husky with emotion, "Oh, Katie, congratulations. So Rick finally popped the question?"

Finally? She gave a watery little laugh. "Yes, he did. Almost made me cry." She ducked her head, feeling a momentary, completely irrational flush of shyness as she added, very softly, "I'm so happy, Dad. I love him so much."

"I know you do. And he loves you. I'm so happy for you, Katie-bug." He paused. "Your mom would be happy for you too."

Kate closed her eyes and pictured her mom's smiling face. "I know, Dad," she whispered.

Another moment of silence hummed over the line and then her dad added, more cheerfully, "Tell Rick congratulations for me. We'll have to celebrate for real next weekend when I come out."

"Yes, we really will," she smiled.

"I am really happy for you, Katie-girl," her dad said again.

"Thanks, Dad. I love you."

"Love you too, Katie. I'll see you and Rick soon."

With that, her dad ended the phone call and Kate slipped her phone into her pocket, looking up to meet Castle's eyes.

"Here, Alexis, do you want to talk to Kate too?"

Castle barely waited for Alexis's answer before tugging her in to kiss her briefly as he passed his phone to her. She squeezed his hand as she greeted Alexis. "Hey, Alexis."

"Oh, Kate, congratulations!" Alexis's jubilant voice rang out clearly over the line. "I'm so happy for you and Dad, really, and so excited that it finally happened! I told Dad months ago that he should propose and I don't know what took him so long."

Yet more happiness blossomed in her chest. Alexis had told Castle to propose? And done it months ago?

"It's so exciting, Kate! You'll be part of our family for real and maybe now I'll get some little brothers or sisters!"

Kate burst out laughing at this unusual spate of words from Alexis, even as she blushed in spite of herself at the mention of little brothers or sisters for Alexis. Oh, this girl. She really was happy over the idea of Kate marrying her father. There was no way she could be feigning her enthusiasm over the idea. Not that Kate had been worried about Alexis's approval but it was still an assurance she treasured. Alexis and Castle were so close and Alexis, after all, had not exactly had the best experience when it came to a stepmother thanks to Gina. So it was indescribably precious to be able to be so certain that Alexis was honestly happy over the idea of Kate marrying her dad.

Was it possible for a person to simply explode from happiness?

"Not so fast, Alexis, we just got engaged," she laughed.

"I know, Kate, I'm just saying eventually, it'll be nice. I'm really, really glad you'll be marrying Dad, Kate."

"Thank you. Alexis, you know I love you too, right?" Kate asked, meeting Castle's eyes to see that he was looking at her as if she were a miracle.

"I love you too, Kate," Alexis answered easily. "And not only because you make my dad happier than I've ever seen him."

Kate's chest flooded with warmth and she ducked her head. "He makes me happy too," she admitted quietly.

And then Castle was abruptly pulling the phone out of her hand. "Sorry, Alexis, we'll talk to you and Grams later. Kate and I want to go back to celebrating our engagement ourselves."

Kate blushed and hit his shoulder. "Castle!" She heard the faint squawk of Alexis's embarrassed protest through the phone but Castle only smirked as he said his goodbye and ended the call. That done, he carelessly dropped his phone onto the table before tugging Kate towards him and then kissing her, hard, as if the touch of her lips was as necessary to him as the air he breathed.

Was it possible that just being engaged made his kisses better?

One kiss turned into two that spun into three and she had no idea how much time passed before their lips finally, reluctantly parted and they smiled into each other's eyes.

"My dad says congratulations and that he's really happy for us."

"He's still coming out next weekend, right?"

"He wouldn't miss it," she assured him quietly, kissing his chin teasingly. "He seemed to think that you should have 'popped the question' months ago."

He grinned. "Your dad probably thinks that because I asked him for his blessing months ago."

She drew back just a little to stare at him. "You did? When?"

"April."

"Really?" She'd had no idea. Castle had asked her dad for his blessing. She hadn't expected that but oh, she loved him for it. Not because it made that much of a difference to her, although it meant more than she would have expected, but because she knew how much it would have meant to her dad.

She managed a teasing smirk. "I take it my dad gave you his permission."

He pretended to huff in disgruntlement. "Not without making me sweat a little."

She laughed. Adorable man. "Silly Castle. You know my dad likes you."

"The one flaw in his otherwise impeccable judgment," Castle quipped.

She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him soundly. "Hardly. I think it's proof of his good judgment. He knows you're good for me."

His expression lit up, again. "You're good for me too."

She laughed because she couldn't quite help it. "That's lucky since we're going to be spending quite a bit of time together."

He tightened his arms around her and kissed her long and thoroughly, his tongue making a slow, mind-clearing sweep of her mouth.

It really was like magic, the way the rest of the world could disappear when he kissed her, she thought fuzzily.

Another delicious few minutes—or hours—later, they resurfaced from the kiss, although their heads stayed close enough that their breaths mingled, their noses almost brushing.

"I think you've made Alexis almost as happy as you've made me."

She smiled. "Alexis is such a sweetheart. I'm really marrying you because of her," she joked.

He smirked. "That's all right then because I'm marrying you for your body."

She pretended to punch his shoulder.

"What, you'd be the hottest trophy wife ever."

"If you ever call me a trophy wife again, you'll be sleeping on the couch for a week," she told him with feigned severity as she went for his ear.

He made a show of cowering away from her. "Apples!"

"And don't you forget it," she mock threatened as she released his ear.

"Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of our lives?" he pouted melodramatically.

The rest of their lives. A little thrill went through her at the phrase, the thought. They had the rest of their lives to spend together. "Better get used to it, Castle."

He tightened his arms around her, all joking leaving his expression. "We're going to be great together."

She smiled into his beautifully clear blue eyes, the eyes she wanted to see every day for the rest of her life. "We already are."

 _~To be continued… with just an Epilogue…~_

* * *

Author's Note 2: My attempt at writing the sort of proposal for Caskett that I wish we'd gotten to see in canon, with no shadows over Beckett's lying about an interview or moving to D.C. or anything.

And yes, this is the last chapter of this fic, except for an Epilogue to wrap things up. I had no idea when I started this fic just how long it would turn out to be but I've enjoyed getting to revisit S3, which is still my favorite season, and I hope it's been as enjoyable for people to read. As always, thank you so much to everyone who's read this fic from the beginning and stuck with it in spite of its length. And to all reviewers, especially the guest reviewers that I can't thank directly, your kind words never fail to brighten my day and I can't thank you enough.


	43. Epilogue

Author's Note: Apologies for how long it's taken to post this but RL got in the way and also I got distracted by an idea for another fic. But finally, here's the Epilogue and the real end of this fic. I hope this is worth the wait. (And yes, Kate is wearing the dress from "The Limey" because that dress looked too good on her not to be worn when Castle could properly enjoy it.)

 **Diving Into It Together**

 _Epilogue_

Kate finished putting her hair up and then put the finishing touches on her makeup before surveying herself in the mirror.

Her eyes automatically dipped down to the low neckline of the strapless black gown, the way it curved over her breasts. The neckline was just high enough that the scar wasn't easily visible but it could be to anyone who was tall enough or if she moved awkwardly and the neckline shifted. She lifted a finger to touch the puckered skin. She had, at least, stopped being surprised by the sight of her scars whenever she looked at herself in the mirror and while she didn't think she would ever get to the point of being completely indifferent to her scars, she was at ease with her own body again and—thanks to Castle—confident in her attractiveness.

But it didn't mean she wanted to advertise the scar either. She tugged the neckline of the dress down and used concealer to cover up the scar, working it into her skin until she was satisfied that the mark didn't show.

That done, she studied herself again. A small smile played on her lips. She'd fallen in love with this dress the moment she and Lanie had seen it when they'd gone out shopping for the fundraiser and hadn't bothered to look further. She loved the simple, elegant lines of the dress and the way it outlined her figure. And it didn't hurt that she knew Castle would love it too.

She returned to their bedroom, only to pause in the doorway to admire the sight of Castle in a tux, suddenly swamped with an odd mix of pure physical attraction mingled in with possessiveness and a touch of incredulity. Oh damn, but he did look good in a tux. It occurred to her that this was the first time she'd seen him wearing a tux since they'd gone to the MADT fundraiser almost three years ago. The tux seemed to accentuate his height, his broad shoulders, his good looks, especially as his hair was perfectly styled and he was freshly shaved. He looked… well, he looked like the rich and famous multi-millionaire that he was, charming and suave and with a touch of glamour. God, how was it possible that she, a plain cop, was living with this man, engaged to this man? For a fleeting moment, she felt much as she imagined King Cophetua's beggar maid must have felt.

He was trying to fasten his cufflinks and apparently having some difficulty because at that moment, he spoke up. "Hey, Beckett, could you giv—" He broke off mid-word as he looked up to see her, his hands falling still as he stared, open-mouthed.

She felt herself blushing, even as she smiled, a warm little thrill going through her. Oh, she loved, so much, the way the sight of her could reduce him to speechlessness, could make him entirely lose his train of thought.

She stepped forward, her hands already reaching out to help him with his cufflinks. Castle, predictably, had plenty of silly cufflinks—cufflinks for _Star Wars_ and _Star Trek_ and Tardis-shaped cufflinks for _Doctor Who_ and others that were _Lord of the Rings_ -inspired. But for tonight, he was going with simple, classic black studs and she was oddly touched at the choice because of what it showed about how seriously he was taking this, how much he knew this meant to her. Not for the first time, she couldn't help but marvel at how wrong she had been in her judgment of him when they'd first met, how misleading his shallow man-about-town playboy persona was.

"Kate, you look incredible," he breathed.

She smiled up at him as she needlessly straightened the collar of his shirt, fiddled with his tie, more because she couldn't resist touching him than because he needed it. She had a hard time refraining from touching him whenever she could, still needed the tactile reassurance that he was alive, safe, after he and Martha had been taken hostage in a bank just over a week ago. The first day he hadn't come into the precinct with her since she'd returned to work, accompanying Martha to the bank as a favor (and because as much as Castle pretended to gripe about it, he almost always agreed to do what Martha asked if he could) and they'd gotten caught in a hostage situation. She felt a cold hand touch her heart at the memory but forcibly pushed it aside. Castle and Martha were fine; everything had turned out just fine. But some part of her still needed to touch him. Having to hold back this last week while in the precinct, mindful of Captain Gates's gimlet gaze, had not been the easiest thing she'd ever done. "You're not so bad yourself, Castle."

He slid his arms around her waist, tugging her in the single step closer until she was pressed against him, and then he bent to kiss her neck. "I've changed my mind, Kate," he murmured against her skin. "Do we have to go tonight? I think I'd rather just stay here and have my wicked way with you."

She huffed a soft laugh and forced herself to step back, out of range of his tempting lips. "You're the host, Castle, so I'm pretty sure you'd be missed."

He pulled a face as he heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Oh fine, be the voice of reason." His expression abruptly changed, along with his tone. "But you know I'm going to spend the entire night thinking about peeling this dress from your body and showing you just how much I appreciate what it does to your body."

A shiver went through her, molten heat pooling low in her belly, at his husky voice, his words. Damn. It was her turn to wish that they didn't need to go anywhere. But she managed to throw him a laughing reproof, "Behave, Castle," as she walked over to the dresser where her jewelry box was.

The first thing she slipped on was her engagement ring, feeling the silly little thrill she still felt, even after two months, whenever she saw the ring on her finger. She couldn't wear it while she was at work so most of the times, it hung alongside her mother's ring on her necklace. Maybe that was why she still reacted so strongly to the sight of the ring on her finger—or more likely, maybe it was just because of what the ring symbolized. Forever, with Castle. She hadn't known, hadn't expected, just how much being officially engaged would mean to her, how it would change things. It wasn't as if she and Castle hadn't both been committed to their relationship before, had already been living together, but somehow, it still felt… different to be officially engaged. It was irrational, really, but undeniable. Things just felt more… certain, more secure.

And if just being engaged felt so different, she could only imagine that marrying him would be even more profound. She couldn't wait.

Next, she put on the simple diamond earrings Castle had bought her to commemorate her returning to work for the first time—which she strongly suspected he had used merely as an excuse to buy her jewelry—and then the bracelet Castle had given her for Valentine's Day.

She smirked a little, amused in spite of herself at the errant thought that it really might appear to an outsider that Castle was her sugar daddy since tonight, the only pieces of jewelry she was wearing were all gifts from him.

She sobered as she opened up the keepsake box from Castle to slip on her dad's old watch and then picked up her necklace with her mother's ring on it, fingering the ring for a moment. She couldn't wear it tonight; the chain wasn't appropriate with her dress but she also didn't feel as if she could simply leave it behind tonight of all nights. She hesitated and then was interrupted by Castle.

"Here, Kate."

He was holding her clutch out and she realized what he meant. She slipped her mother's necklace into the small pouch where she packed jewelry for travelling and then put the pouch inside the clutch. She would still have her mom's ring with her tonight.

And Castle had understood, even without her saying. God, how did he do that, always seem to guess what she needed?

She felt a rush of emotion clog her throat and couldn't have identified if it was at the thought of her mom, of her mom's legacy being honored tonight, or at him, for knowing, for arranging all this, or some combination of it all.

He slipped his arms around her waist and she stepped into his arms gladly, letting her head rest against his shoulder, his solid warmth as always providing a haven and a bulwark of comfort and safety. As much as she loved Castle for arranging this, as much as she honestly wanted to see her mother's legacy being honored in this way, she had also realized more and more over the past few days that tonight was not going to be easy. Castle had asked her if she wanted to speak tonight and the question had given her pause, the stark realization that tonight would be laying bare the history of her mother's loss, in a very real sense, letting the entire world know about her mother's death and how it had affected her. Even if it had been written about in the Nikki Heat books, that had been fiction and only those who knew her personally would have necessarily known that Nikki's backstory was an echo of her own. Now, after tonight, everyone would know. And that bothered her. She didn't speak about her mom easily, not with anyone. The only people she talked to about her mom were her dad, Castle, and on occasion, Lanie. This—this would be different.

She wanted it, loved the idea of the Johanna Beckett Memorial Scholarship—but that didn't mean tonight was going to be easy. Even if she wasn't going to be speaking. (She had hesitated, considered, but finally decided against it. She wasn't much of one for public speaking, publicity in general, and the idea of standing up in front of a roomful of strangers and the press and talking about her mother—baring the deepest wounds of her heart, her most precious memories, to the world—no, she couldn't do it. And Castle had understood.)

"You sure you don't want to play hooky tonight, Beckett?"

She choked on a laugh. Oh, Castle. Of course he would make her laugh right now. And with the laughter came some added confidence.

She stepped back just enough to look up and meet his eyes. "Still no, Castle. We'll go and meet people and celebrate my mother's legacy just like we planned."

He pulled a face of mock disgruntlement. "If you insist. My idea's more fun though."

She laughed softly and moved in to whisper in his ear, "There'll be plenty of time to have fun and for me to thank you properly after the party's over."

He groaned and reached for her but she skipped backwards, neatly evading his hands as she gave him a teasing smile. "Patience, Castle. I'm going to go up and see if Alexis wants any help getting ready."

His eyes softened the way they usually did when she showed her honest affection for Alexis but all he said was, "You'd better knock on my mother's door too or she might keep us waiting for an hour."

Kate only grinned at him before she slipped upstairs, pausing to knock on Martha's door and remind her through the door that they wanted to leave in the next 10 minutes before knocking on Alexis's door. She peered in at Alexis's invitation to see Alexis looking very pretty in a pale blue dress as she brushed her hair.

Alexis turned to smile at her, her expression changing at the sight of Kate. "Oh, Kate, you look amazing."

Kate laughed lightly. "So do you, Alexis. I came up to see if you wanted any help getting ready."

"That would be great, thanks, Kate. It's always so much easier if someone else does my hair."

Kate smiled as she brushed Alexis's hair out and then pinned back just part of it while leaving the rest to fall freely. The simple style suited Alexis, who wasn't given to ostentation. She enjoyed helping Alexis get ready for formal events, had loved helping Alexis with her prom preparations months ago. And it was good to see Alexis smiling, her expression bright, her eyes clear and free from shadows. Alexis had been subdued and a little sad for the last week since breaking up with Ashley and she and Kate had had another break-up night of ice cream sundaes and silly movies. (And Kate had duly talked Castle out of threatening to maim Ashley for hurting his little girl, placating that every teenager had her heart broken some time and the best thing Castle could do was simply be there for Alexis.)

As usual, Kate was flooded with memories of her own mom doing much the same, hugging her and making her hot chocolate after Robbie broke her teenage heart, her mom helping her do her hair, teaching her how to put on makeup. She had a sudden mental image of brushing the hair of a little girl with brown hair and Castle's blue eyes and felt her heart flutter, her hands faltering for just a moment. Yes, she wanted that. Not immediately—she was enjoying being engaged and wanted to simply bask in their current happiness, their current family, for a while longer but someday… Oh yes, someday…

She met Alexis's eyes in the mirror and managed a smile, although she was sure she was blushing. "All set, Alexis?"

"Yeah, let's go before Dad gets too impatient."

They exchanged laughs of shared understanding, the laughs of two people who were well acquainted with Castle's tendency to impatience, as they went downstairs.

Castle's expression softened when he saw Alexis. "You look great, sweetie. Too grown up but still great."

Alexis dimpled up at him, too accustomed to his little asides about her growing up too fast to react to that portion of his compliment. "Thanks, Dad."

He smirked as he slid an arm around each of their waists. "I am the luckiest man in the world to be showing up with the two most beautiful women who'll be at this party."

"Rank flattery, Castle," Kate laughed.

"It is not," Castle began only to be interrupted by Martha making one of her trademark dramatic entrances.

"Darlings, I'm ready," Martha trilled as she swanned down the stairs, a vibrant vision in an emerald green dress sparkling with beads and sequins. "And don't you both look gorgeous."

"Why, thank you, Mother," Castle said wryly.

"You're already too vain, Richard," Martha retorted.

Alexis and Kate both laughed. "Grams is right, Dad," Alexis teased.

Castle bridled in exaggerated offense.

Kate kissed his cheek in light consolation. "Don't pout, Castle. Now, come on, it's time to leave."

His expression softened as she'd known it would at the touch of her lips. "Yes, we should go," he agreed. "It wouldn't do for the host to show up late although I'm sure Paula and Eileen will have things well in hand."

Kate was sure of that too. Eileen was the event planner and from what Kate had seen of her, she was one of the most formidably organized people Kate had ever met, which made her very good at what she did.

She slipped on her wrap and picked up her clutch and then they headed out of the loft.

* * *

Kate was feeling overwhelmed.

It had started from the moment she, Castle, Alexis, and Martha had walked into the Plaza Hotel ballroom, a huge, opulent space that was used to hosting some of the City's most exclusive events. And now it was being used for a fundraiser to honor her mother.

It wasn't so bad as long as Castle stayed by her side but sadly, that hadn't lasted long because Paula had captured him the moment guests had started to arrive and Castle had, of necessity, needed to start playing host.

Kate drifted around the tables where the silent auction was being held, making a cursory survey of the items being auctioned. Castle and Paula had called in every connection, pulled every string they each possessed in order to acquire the items for auction that ranged from items as relatively low-budget as an autographed set of DVDs of Wes Craven's movies and theatre tickets and then increased from there to items like box seats to athletic events and tickets to various performances with backstage passes to private boat cruises along the river to trips to various spots from Bar Harbor, Maine to Nice, France to Morocco.

And with every item, every guest that arrived, Kate felt the sense of being out of her depth get stronger. She watched as Castle greeted a distinguished-looking couple whom Kate vaguely recognized from occasional mentions in Page Six as being members of the very wealthy MacMillan family. The Mayor had already arrived, along with the Police Commissioner, and she had greeted them along with Castle. Winston and Blake Wellesley, now a state senator, arrived and greeted her familiarly, having apparently gotten over any offense they might have taken from her involvement in the bike messenger case last fall, with Blake Wellesley even offering his condolences on Captain Montgomery's death.

But in spite of these few more personal greetings, Kate was out of her depth. And with every minute that passed, she realized even more strongly that she and Castle really were from different worlds.

This was Castle's world, this gathering of the rich and famous in the City. She'd realized it when they'd gone to the MADT fundraiser a couple years ago but at the time, she hadn't particularly cared since it had only been one night of being essentially undercover for a case. Now—well, now everything was different. She was engaged to Castle. He was hosting this fundraiser for her sake.

This was his world—and she was the proverbial fish out of water.

Even her father was more comfortable than she was, in a tux and talking with some other lawyers from his firm and to the Dean of NYU Law School, who would be introducing Castle tonight. As a lawyer who worked at one of the larger law firms in Manhattan, her dad had had the opportunity to attend a number of formal events for clients, perhaps not on such a large scale, but still formal events.

She, on the other hand, was a cop. Cops didn't throw this sort of formal function. A cop's idea of a party was ordering in pizza and beers to the precinct or going out to a local cop bar. And it didn't help that the average cop's yearly salary was pocket change to basically every guest here tonight.

She'd always known that her salary was mere pennies compared to Castle's net worth but tonight was making the vast gulf between her and Castle's lives loom larger than ever. She looked over at Castle, who was smiling as he greeted Judge Markway and his wife, and felt warmth well up inside her chest as usually happened at the sight of him. Her Castle. He was hers—but she felt the stirrings of her own insecurities, her inadequacies, inside her. He would do all this, spend all this money and time and energy for her, to honor her mother. He gave her so much—and what had she ever done for him?

Kate felt herself relaxing a little as she was joined by Esposito, Ryan, and Jenny.

"So this is how the other half lives, eh, Beckett," Espo observed.

"Don't look at me," she laughed a little. "I'm no more used to this sort of thing than you are."

Ryan shrugged a little. "It's a hard life but someone has to live it," he quipped.

"Right, to give the rest of us peasants something to dream about," Espo cracked.

"Oh, be nice, Javi," Jenny scolded mildly. "I think it's fun and exciting to get to see this sort of thing. We'd never get invited to an event like this if not for Rick."

Esposito eyed Kate assessingly. "Better get used to it, Beckett. You're the one who's marrying the man. This is going to be your life from now on."

"I'm still going to be me, Espo," she retorted but couldn't quite help the way her stomach clenched a little at his words, teasing as they were. Because they were also true. This—all the trappings of wealth and the fame—was going to be a part of her life. Already was a part of her life, in a very real sense.

Oh god. How could she possibly deserve this, deserve him?

She was pulled from her uncharacteristic self-doubt when Castle turned and met her eyes, his face immediately illuminated with a smile as he excused himself and made his way to her, slipping his arm around her waist and kissing her temple, before he greeted the boys and Jenny.

"Hey guys. Jenny, you look lovely."

"Thanks, Rick," Jenny smiled up at him. "Everything looks great tonight, Rick."

"Thanks but I don't deserve the credit for that. I'll tell the event planner you said so, though. Come on, guys, I see Paula signaling that it's time to take our seats. We're all at the same table."

They made their way to a table seated right up front next to the small stage to see that her dad, Martha, Alexis, and Lanie were already there.

The mayor saluted Castle jokingly as they passed his table where he was already talking easily with Captain Gates and her husband. (Castle had invited Captain Gates in part of his ongoing attempt to curry favor with her. Kate was rather surprised that Captain Gates had come at all but supposed that the idea of a dinner where she could mingle with the Mayor and the Police Commissioner and other big-wigs was simply too good an opportunity to pass up.)

Her father smiled at her and kissed her cheek when she arrived, although they had, of course, greeted each other earlier.

"I need to go talk to the Dean since we'll be speaking before dinner," Castle leaned in to tell her.

She squeezed his hand and managed a smile. "I know you'll be great, Castle." He would do her and her mother proud. She had no doubt of that. But her throat was suddenly tight with emotion, again, at this reminder of just what he was willing to do for her.

Castle left the table with a general smile for everyone, pausing on his way around the table to drop a kiss on Alexis's hair as she told him blithely, "Knock 'em dead, Dad."

It was just a few minutes before Paula was calling everyone's attention to the stage, welcoming everyone before introducing the Dean of NYU Law School, Richard Revesz.*

Dean Revesz thanked everyone in turn before recounting the story of his surprise on receiving a phone call from the known bestselling author, Richard Castle, proposing to start a scholarship in memory of the late Johanna Beckett, Class of 1976.

Beside her, Kate felt her dad slip his hand into hers and squeeze it at the mention of her mom's name and she turned her head to give him a rather watery smile.

The Dean went on to describe, briefly, the terms of the scholarship, the application process, and the qualities that the successful applicants would possess before concluding, "But before I bore you all silly with administrative details, I would like to introduce to you instead the man who made all of this possible, Richard Castle, and let him explain in his own words what he envisions for the Johanna Beckett Memorial Scholarship."

With that cue and to thunderous applause, Castle was striding onto the stage where he shook Dean Revesz's hand before he made his way to the mike.

He had one of his publicity smiles on and as he faced all the people in the huge ballroom, Kate could feel the impact of his charisma, his charm. Oh, the man really was good at all this.

"Good evening, everyone. Thank you, Dean Revesz. It's truly been my pleasure getting to know you over the course of planning this scholarship. And thank you all for being here tonight," Castle began, pausing for a moment and Kate could see, although she wasn't sure anyone else could, the subtle squaring of his shoulders. Her heart melted a little in her chest at this sign of nerves in Castle, who, of all people she had ever met, always seemed so comfortable in his own skin and who was accustomed to being in the spotlight.

"I'm sure many of you are wondering why I, who am better known for writing popular fiction about catching criminals, decided to sponsor a scholarship for criminal defense. It must strike a lot of you as being about as appropriate as if Darth Vader decided to start a scholarship to the Jedi Academy." There was a burst of laughter at this self-deprecating joke, the atmosphere in the room easing and becoming warmer, more relaxed, and Castle allowed himself a grin. "And if anyone had told me I'd be doing this three years ago, I would have thought much the same thing." He paused again, sobering. "But then I met a certain NYPD homicide detective and through getting to know her and immersing myself in the world of law enforcement, I have learned the true meaning of justice and the importance of seeing justice be done."

Castle's eyes met and held hers for a long moment and Kate had the sudden sense that the rest of the ballroom had faded away and there was no one else around. It was just her and him and he was speaking to her alone, telling their story, her mother's story, as only he could.

Then he blinked, his gaze moving on over the ballroom-full of guests. "I have spent nearly every day of the last few years getting to know the inner workings of the NYPD and it has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to be a witness to the bravery and dedication of the people who fight every day to make our city a safer place." Castle nodded in the direction of Captain Gates and the Police Commissioner, waiting out the brief wave of applause.

"A very wise man, whom I was fortunate enough to call a friend, the late Captain Roy Montgomery of the NYPD, used to say that the job of a homicide detective is to speak for the dead after the wicked rob them of their voices."

Kate blinked back the prick of tears at the mention of Captain Montgomery and glanced at Esposito and Ryan to see that they were both looking solemn and melancholy.

"But the work of the NYPD—gathering the evidence and following the leads and making the arrest—is only one step in our justice system and in the next step, the NYPD along with all of us relies on other professionals to actually do the work of seeing justice done. And a large part of getting justice is ensuring that both sides have an equal opportunity to be heard and to defend themselves. Unfortunately, in this world, there are all too many people who too often end up forgotten and marginalized because they cannot afford to hire someone to advocate for them. Tonight, we are here to celebrate those people who fight for those without a voice during their lives, the people who defend the rights of those who would otherwise fall through the cracks of the justice system because true justice means that the size of someone's bank account should not be a measure for the extent of a person's rights."

He paused for the scattered applause and then his eyes went first to her dad and then to Kate herself.

His voice softened, became more personal. "I am here tonight in memory of one of those people who fought for justice for the voiceless, Johanna Beckett. I never had the honor of meeting her but in addition to Johanna Beckett's legacy as a tireless advocate for our justice system, she was also the mother of NYPD Detective Katherine Beckett."

He paused again for the wave of applause and Kate managed a smile, feeling herself blush at abruptly being the center of attention.

"From all I have heard, I know that Johanna Beckett was every bit as determined, brilliant, and courageous as her daughter is. Johanna Beckett worked many cases pro bono, sacrificing family dinners, time spent with her beloved family, sleep, and ultimately her life in order to make a positive difference in the world. Johanna Beckett believed in the beauty of truth and in justice and she endeavored throughout her life to promote truth and justice in a world where both those things are too often lacking."

It was Kate's turn to glance at her dad, reaching out to squeeze his hand, before she looked back up at Castle through eyes that were blurry with sudden tears at this amazing tribute to her mother. She had reluctantly accepted that she might never get justice for her mother, as much as she hated the thought of it. It haunted her, an open, suppurating wound that wouldn't heal. It hurt in a deep, visceral way to think about but she also knew that Castle was right, that her mother would rather know that Kate was happy and living her life fully than have Kate sacrifice her own life in order to get justice for her mother. And after the sacrifice Captain Montgomery had made, what he had done to keep her safe even after his death in sending those papers to the mysterious Mr. Smith—Kate could not dishonor Captain Montgomery's actions by throwing her own life away.

And she had too much to live for. As much as it might hurt to think about not getting justice for her mother, when it came down to it, she chose Castle. Chose a life with Castle and Alexis and Martha and her dad, her _family_. She would always choose Castle.

She could not get justice for her mother but there was more than one way to honor her mother and tonight was doing just that. Her mother's life and her legacy were about more than the way she had died. Johanna Beckett's life should not be reduced to her death but was about the work she had done, her love for her husband and her daughter. Her mother's life had also been about Sunday morning brunches, about decorating Christmas cookies with a young Katie, about teasing Jim over his love of baseball, about off-key singing while standing at the stove.

Kate felt a sharp stab of longing for her mom as memories flickered through her mind. But she looked up at Castle, standing tall and handsome on the stage as he honored her mother's legacy, and felt a rush of love for him. And she had the sudden sense that maybe, after all, they had always been meant to be. She had lost her mother, the most devastating loss that had changed her entire life, but then, years later, she had met Castle. Like a gift from Fate as if to say, here is your saving grace, your reminder that even after tragedy, life can go on and you can find happiness again, that even on the worst days, there's always a possibility for joy.

"Tonight, we honor Johanna Beckett and all those like her, who voluntarily choose to dedicate their lives to the pursuit of justice. Tonight, we come together to help a new generation of young lawyers who will follow in Johanna Beckett's footsteps and strive to serve the public by acting as a voice for those who would otherwise be voiceless. Your generosity will fund full and partial scholarships to law students who pledge to work as public defenders following their graduations."

He paused and his eyes met and held Kate's as he concluded, with a small smile, "I'm a writer and as a writer, I am a believer in finding meaning and poetry in the stories of this world we live in. I can think of no better way to celebrate the hard work and sacrifice of Johanna Beckett than by ensuring that her legacy of serving as an advocate for those without a voice in the justice system go on, carried forward into the future by a new generation of lawyers. Thank you for coming tonight. I hope you all enjoy your dinners and the rest of this evening. Thank you."

Castle smiled and nodded as there was a thunderous burst of applause, that Kate was only peripherally aware of, all her attention, her mind and her heart, focused only on him. Oh, this man. She didn't think she'd ever loved him more. How could she possibly deserve this man?

She was aware of Lanie nudging her. "I hope you know how lucky you are, Kate. I can't think of another man who would do something like this."

Kate managed a rather shaky smile, not taking her eyes off of Castle. "Oh, believe me, I know just how lucky I am."

Castle made his way off the stage and was returning to them, although his progress was hampered by first the Mayor and then Captain Gates, who was actually smiling approvingly at Castle (so Kate supposed wonders never ceased) and then the Police Commissioner.

Eventually, though, he returned to their table. Espo and Ryan both greeted him with congratulatory fist bumps, Ryan adding "You did good, Castle. Made me want to hand over my next paycheck."

Alexis leaped up to hug her dad. "That was a great speech, Dad."

Her father stood up and pulled Castle into a quick hug that Kate suspected was both out of gratitude and partly to hide the tears in his eyes. "Thank you, son," he said gruffly. "I know Johanna would be so proud and so happy."

"Thank you, Jim."

And then—finally—he was standing in front of her, giving her one of his quizzical half-smiles as if to say, _Well, how'd I do?_

She had no words, couldn't speak through the rush of emotion clogging her throat. But she surged to her feet, cupping his face with her hands, and kissed him, hard. And she didn't care that they were surrounded not only by their nearest and dearest but by a couple hundred of the crème de la crème of New York society. Didn't care that they were making something of a scene or that she was essentially making a public announcement of their engagement with about as much subtlety as an ad in Times Square.

He stiffened a little in surprise before his hands immediately went to her waist, holding her in place.

She broke off the kiss, blushing hotly, as she became belatedly aware of the sound of laughter and applause. He laughed and dropped a quick, teasing kiss on her nose before they sat down to face the laughter of their friends and family. It was a little while before Kate's blush faded but Castle kept her hand securely grasped within his and as she looked at his smiling face, she couldn't help but think that after all, she didn't care in the slightest that they'd just made a scene. She loved Richard Castle and she didn't care who knew it.

* * *

Castle slipped his arms around her waist, bending to brush a kiss against her neck as she stood in front of the dresser and took off her earrings and her bracelet. "Have I mentioned just how divine you look in this dress?" he murmured huskily.

Kate felt a delicious shiver go through her and wasn't sure if it was more from the touch of his lips or the husky tone of his voice. She tilted her head to give him more access and leaned back against him. "Yes, several times," she answered with a breathy little sigh.

He had discarded his jacket and slipped off his cufflinks and his tie, the top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, and he looked wonderfully disheveled.

"It's worth repeating. You're always beautiful but tonight, you look like a goddess. Aphrodite would be jealous."

She gave a little laugh as she turned in his arms and looped her arms around his neck. "Are you trying to seduce me into your bed, Mr. Castle?" she teased.

He smirked. "Yes. Is it working?"

She leaned in to kiss him, her smile fading. After tonight, after all he'd done for her, she didn't feel like teasing him. "I'm already yours, Castle. No seduction necessary."

He returned her kiss, drawing back reluctantly, to stare at her as if she were a miracle. "I don't know how I got to be so lucky."

He liked to talk about his luck but somehow, tonight, she couldn't let it go. Luck implied that he didn't deserve what he had. He had his own insecurities—and she couldn't help but wonder if her own habit of teasing him, of giving him a hard time, contributed to it. Because as much as her wall had come down, she still wasn't good at talking about her emotions, about putting into words all that he meant to her. It was so much easier to respond with snark and banter and as much as that was a part of their relationship, she wondered sometimes if it bothered him, especially because she knew how much words meant to him.

She abruptly hugged him, momentarily hiding her face in his shoulder. "No, Rick, I'm the lucky one to have you. I feel like all I do is take from you and you give me so much all the time and I don't deserve you." How could she possibly deserve this man who loved her so much and so deeply? This man who had saved her life and her heart, who drove her crazy sometimes but with all that, made her happier than she had ever been? This man, who had started a scholarship to honor her mother's memory for her sake? He had given her so much—everything—and all she gave him, all she could give him, was her own self.

He had made her life so much better, brighter, and she… she had brought him into her life of darkness and danger so that just in the last few years, he'd been shot at, had almost frozen to death, had almost been incinerated by a dirty bomb.

It wasn't like her to be so self-doubting but when it came to Castle, she couldn't seem to help it. And the vast chasm separating their incomes didn't help nor the fact that, as had been made clear to her tonight, she and Castle were from different worlds.

He drew back to look at her, staring at her as if she'd just sprouted a second head. "You think you don't give me anything? Kate, you…" He momentarily seemed to be at a loss for words and then he let out a breath. "You couldn't be more wrong, Kate. You've given me more than enough, you've given me everything."

"I don't see how." How could she alone be enough for him?

"Kate…" he sighed and led her over to sit on their bed, facing her. "You want to know what you give me? You give me disinterested affection, for one thing. You like me for _me_ , not for my money or my fame, and you have no idea how precious and how rare that is. You challenge me, keep me grounded, you inspire me and I don't mean only in my writing. You've made me a better man, to say nothing of a better writer and a better father."

She shook her head in automatic, instinctive denial. "You were always a good man and a great dad, Castle."

"You've still made me better. You take care of Alexis, listen to her troubles, have break-up nights with her when she's sad. It's… amazing, Kate, and I can't even tell you how much that means to me to know that Alexis has you too."

"It's easy to be good to Alexis."

"Not that easy because neither Meredith nor Gina managed it," he added, his tone hardening.

The stark, painful truth of that statement was somehow more reassuring than any softer declarations. For once, the mention of the women in Castle's past was comforting rather than not. She knew he wasn't marrying her for Alexis's sake but it was still a salutary reminder that Castle was no naïf. More importantly, he knew her, knew her better than anyone else, and he had still chosen her. "I love Alexis too," she said softly.

The faintest smile curved his lips, the one that existed mostly in his eyes and even after all this time, made her heart skip a beat. "You see, Kate, you give me love so don't ever say you haven't given me anything. Your love is enough, more than enough. You make everything better."

She managed a watery smile as she curved her arms around his neck. "You make everything better for me too," she whispered against his lips just before she kissed him. When it really mattered, he always knew the right words to reach her heart. And she realized all over again what she'd momentarily forgotten in her spasm of self-distrust, that in spite of the fact that they came from very disparate backgrounds, through some strange alchemy, the world made sense when they were together. They fit together. And not only in the physical sense. They had been through so much, had faced more danger together than most couples would face in a lifetime, and she knew from experience how shared hardships both brought people together and had a way of revealing the truth of people's natures. She and Castle knew each other so well and while they each irritated each other at times, in the end, she was also sure that they were both happier together.

He tugged her closer to him as he deepened the kiss and then she felt her dress sagging away from her body as he unzipped it in a single motion.

She broke off the kiss on a breathless little laugh. "Smooth, Castle."

He directed an exaggerated leer at her. "I thought so. You impressed?"

She smirked and waggled her eyebrows. "I'd be more impressed if you weren't so overdressed."

He affected a look of shock. "Why, Detective Beckett, whatever do you have in mind?"

She laughed and deliberately pushed him back onto the bed before crawling onto the bed after him, her dress sliding the rest of the way off her body and pooling on the floor. "To have my wicked way with you, Castle," she drawled in answer, her hands already working to undo the remaining buttons of his shirt.

He huffed a breathless little laugh. "Does it still count if the wicked ways are entirely mutual?"

"You're the writer, Castle. What do you think?" she quipped as she divested him of his shirt, pausing to run her appreciative and frankly lustful gaze over his bare chest and shoulders.

"You're rendering me incapable of thought."

"Guess I'm doing something right then."

He laughed and tugged her down on top of him before rolling over so she was trapped beneath him. "As long as it's you and me, it's always right," he said with sudden seriousness.

"Sap," she teased him breathlessly.

"Guilty as charged." His lips quirked. "Still wanna marry me?"

She grinned up at him, wide and bright, feeling joy bubble up inside her so she felt a little giddy with happiness. Giddy, her! She didn't even know why exactly she was suddenly feeling almost euphoric except maybe it was like the song from the old musical said, _I'm in love with a wonderful guy!_ She was in love with and loved by the best man she'd ever met. And she was going to marry him. "Always."

His expression and his eyes registered his reaction to the word, the sentiment.

She hooked her leg around his thigh and took advantage of his momentary distraction to roll them in one fluid move, glorying in the fact that she could, that her upper body strength had returned so she could do this without the incision in her scar pulling. He gave a surprised little yelp but his eyes darkened with arousal.

She smiled down at him, lifting one hand to ruffle her fingers through his hair on an impulse of tenderness she couldn't quite control. "My Rick," she murmured against his lips just before she kissed him, slowly, at first, and then harder.

She broke off the kiss only to shift downwards, leaving a string of kisses from his chin to his throat and then further.

"God, Kate," he choked.

She smirked against his skin. "Quiet, Castle. I'm trying to concentrate." She threw as much wicked significance into the last word as she could muster and heard him choke on a laugh that ended on a gasp as she deliberately let her teeth graze his flat nipple as she slid lower… and lower still…

She knew how to touch him, knew every inch of his body by now, and she gloried in the knowledge, the delicious confidence of it. And as always between them, it turned into an equal exchange as she gave and he took and he gave and she took and every kiss, every touch, every caress was so familiar and still so magically new, confirmation and celebration, passion and joy and lust and love.

And afterwards, she curled up against his side, her head nestled on his shoulder, so closely entwined that she couldn't tell whether the dampness of perspiration was from her or from him.

She smiled lazily to herself. She'd never been one for snuggling in bed but as with most things with Castle, it was different.

Her eyes closed as she let herself drift into sated somnolence, lulled by the warmth of his body, the steady beat of his heart, the soft stirrings of his breath against her hair.

"Love you." The mumbled words slipped from her lips without conscious thought.

"I know."

She could hear the smirk in his murmur. Typical Castle.

The thought drifted into her mind as she hovered at the edge of sleep and she was smiling as she drifted off.

At peace and happy in the knowledge that they were, as they always would be, together.

 _~The End~_

* * *

* Richard Revesz was the actual Dean of NYU Law School in the fall of 2011. My apologies to Professor Revesz for appropriating his name and putting words in his mouth for my own purposes.

A/N 2: After more than 500 pages in Word, this epically-long fic is finally over. From here on, I think we can leave Castle and Beckett to their happy future (and for those who are wondering, in my head, in this universe, canon ends after "Veritas" so Castle and Beckett don't have to go through any of the issues surrounding Castle's disappearance or the nonsense that is LokSat.)

Thank you a million times to everyone who's stuck with this story from the beginning and to everyone who's joined along the way. I can't begin to tell you how much your reviews have meant to me. Until next time, thank you all again.


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